


Glimpse

by qianwanshi



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Domestic Fluff, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, F/M, Falling In Love, Fix-It, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Married Life, Post-IT Chapter Two (2019), Recovery, Richie Tozier saves himself, Stanley Uris Lives, Supernatural Elements, cross country road trip, full content warning in notes, realizing love isn't scary, some depressing elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:33:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 113,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21851494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qianwanshi/pseuds/qianwanshi
Summary: Richie struggles after Derry and the clown in a way that he doesn't see any of his friends struggling. He falls into bad habits and isolation, and it feels like none of the Losers even notice. Then he meets an interesting stranger who offers him a look into what life could be, but it's up to him to determine if he really wants it bad enough to work for it.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon/Audra Phillips, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Patricia Blum Uris/Stanley Uris
Comments: 200
Kudos: 258





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Проблеск (Glimpse)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24965062) by [Froud](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Froud/pseuds/Froud)
  * Inspired by [Turn](https://archiveofourown.org/works/879852) by [Saras_Girl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saras_Girl/pseuds/Saras_Girl). 



> OK I've been told that reading this after reading the bad date au is like drinking orange juice after brushing your teeth so like, warning I guess? The first ch of this is really grim and I'm sorry but after this one it will become much much lighter I promise I hate misery-fest stories more than anything. This will be a hopeful story!  
> I will probably be slower to update than I've been in the past but we'll see I guess!
> 
> Content warnings: drug and alcohol abuse, suicidal ideation, unsafe sex practices, unhealthy feelings about sex, depression, internalized homophobia, Stan's suicide attempt is mentioned but only in passing (more details in end notes)  
> if there are any warnings you think I should add please let me know
> 
> Also yes the general concept was inspired by an old hp fic that wouldn't leave my brain

Survive. Survive. For four days it felt like the only word capable of existing in Richie’s mind. Existing even without him being actively aware of it before the Losers Club reunion in the way his neck was so tense it pushed him into a headache while on his flight to Maine, and fully settling into existence when Stanley showed up at dinner late and disheveled with his arms wrapped in thick bandages up past his elbows. Just fucking survive like Stan almost didn't and it would be okay. And slowly the word morphed into a plea, his chest ripped open in the more figurative sense to match up with Eddie’s being literally torn and shredded. 

Survive. He begged, sobbing, screaming it. Please fucking let Eddie survive. Let Eddie survive and it would all be okay. 

But that was six months ago, and Richie can’t remember what it felt like to have that drive. He doesn’t remember what it was in him that lit that fire that told him to survive, over and over until he finally got the fuck out of Derry alive. 

What comes after surviving?

He told himself if he survived everything would be okay, and yet somehow…

He came back home and he made his dates in Reno. He followed the script, recited the jokes, regurgitated the story he was given about not answering unknown phone calls right before going onstage ever again, and people ate it up. 

He survived and nothing fucking changed. 

He remembered the six best friends he’d ever known and nothing fucking changed. 

It hurts worse, now, not just having an endless black hole of memories where his childhood was supposed to be. Remembering these people vividly, everything they went through together, how much they _loved_ each other, and still feeling so alone. It’s a million times worse than any of the shit Pennywise ever pulled on them. 

Pennywise tormented them wearing each other’s faces like masks, showing him Eddie vomiting up a black bloody ooze or showing Bill his kid brother running around with one arm. Those things were horrifying in a way Richie never knew before or since, but in hindsight they don't hold a candle to the moment in the hospital waiting room just after the news that Eddie would make it. Happy tears and grasping each other close, and Stanley standing on unsteady legs looking so old and exhausted. Saying, “I don’t want any of you to contact me again,” and walking out the door. Not even a cosmic eldritch horror clown could have come up with something that would cut that _deep_. 

The rest of the Losers had left him, too. Trickling out one by one from the hospital to go back to their homes and their lives. And when Eddie was well enough, he left too. He went back to his wife and his boring job and it was always like that, Richie thinks. He always needed them more than they ever needed him back. They all had something to go home to, and so he packed his shit and went home too. 

It’s fine, he’s fine. 

He has a tour coming up with dates across California and the Pacific Northwest and he’s dreading it. Dreading the shitty motel rooms and the old dancing monkey routine of getting up on stage and telling the same old jokes rewritten into new stories. Still all the same garbage, the girlfriend, the jerking off, talking about pussy and how much of an idiot he’ll be just to get some. 

It pays though, which he needs. Not for his dumpy little apartment, that’s for sure, but definitely for his frequent trips to the liquor store or the bar a few blocks down that doesn’t seem to have many concerns about cutting off a man who’s clearly had too much. For the coke he can sometimes find in the alley behind the bar in the hands of some reedy Korean dude who could kick his ass six different ways but sings a mean Celine Dion on karaoke nights. 

Adam, his agent, doesn’t give a shit as long as he shows up when and where he’s told to show up and does the jokes he’s supposed to do. His friends are- he doesn’t know, honestly. 

There’s a group chat he thinks he’s a part of, or there was one. Everyone in there but Stan talking about memories and keeping each other up to date on the comings and goings of their lives. Ben sent pictures of a dog and Beverly used to talk a lot about moving into a new house, but Richie stopped responding months ago and then stopped even opening the messages after that. 

Everyone just. Went back to their lives. 

The thing is Richie has nothing worthwhile to share with them. He doesn’t have family, no partner to share stories about, he doesn’t even have a fucking dog to post pictures of. His whole persona is a lie, which they now all know because even if he hadn’t slipped at dinner (‘I don’t write my own material’) he’d sobbed and gone manic when Eddie was bleeding out in his arms in a way that was pretty transparent. So what the fuck is he going to text them about? ‘Got in a fight with my agent today about nothing like an idiot!’ What’s he going to see in there? Ben and Beverly sharing pictures of their perfect life together? He saw them kissing outside of the hospital while Eddie was in surgery, when he was trying to grab a quick smoke. They’re probably off, he doesn’t even know, being hot and straight somewhere together. 

So he doesn’t text them. 

Bill used to come by his place at first, would sit and chat and talk about the new book he’s writing or how he and his wife were talking about going to therapy and Richie would listen and nod and jab fun when he felt like it. But then Bill never wanted to get day-wasted with him and started to look at him with something far too soft in his eyes and Richie just stopped answering his calls. Bill would pound on his door and he wouldn’t answer, would hold stock still so he couldn’t prove he was inside, and eventually Bill stopped coming by too. 

It makes him think about Bill as a kid. How when Richie crossed the line Bill punched him in the fuckin face. If Richie had locked Bill out like this as kids, he would’ve scaled the side of the building with the power of spite alone and then screamed at him. Now grown, Bill gives up on him and goes back to his wife and that’s it. 

He gets fewer and fewer personal text messages as well. In a distant way, he knows people don’t enjoy talking to brick walls so of course they stop texting him, but it starts to feel like they’re giving up too. 

The only time he reaches out to any of them is a complete accident. It’s noon and he’s hammered, so drunk he couldn’t even stand if he tried, staring at a TV he doesn’t think works anymore. So he calls Eddie who picks up almost immediately. 

“Richie?”

It’s nice to hear his voice. Makes him want to cry. 

So he tells him it’s nice to hear his voice but it comes out like mush through his uncooperative mouth. 

“What?” Eddie asks. “Rich, sorry, can I call you back? I’m with my lawyer.”

Richie hangs up and chucks his phone across the room. Days later when he sees a collection of missed calls through the spiderwebbing cracks across his screen, he doesn’t remember the exchange and doesn’t care to try.

It’s winter, he thinks, or it might be early spring. It was cold and damp and grey in Seattle on his tour where he got heckled onstage and told a guy to go fuck himself to death. It wasn’t his most creative comeback, but it worked. It’s impossible to tell back in LA where the weather is constantly mild except for when the entire state is on fucking fire, which it’s not currently. 

He has the passing thought that the new year must have come and then buys enough coke that _all_ of his thoughts become passing fleeting things. If his thoughts come and go too quickly, he can’t catch any of them and that’s all he wants. If he sobers up, if his thoughts become tangible, he can hear the clown laughing in his ear like he’s right there. If his mind clears, he can hear him singing his fucking _song_ like a part of him still lives inside of Richie’s head. _Your dirty little secret_. It doesn’t make any sense and that pisses him off even more. It’s dead, they killed It together, all seven of them. He watched Its heart crumble and vanish and heard Its frightened weak death rattle. He _knows_ the threat is gone and yet he’s still scared all the time, constantly.

Sometimes he thinks… maybe if he wasn’t so alone he wouldn’t feel so scared. 

Not the Losers. He can’t call them up, sad and pathetic, a disgusting mess. None of them ever talked about hearing a clown whispering in their ears after, not that he can remember. Calling them and admitting that he’s scared of nothing, of the boogeyman, like a child at a sleepaway camp begging his mom to just stay on the phone a little longer and then he’ll go to sleep. Pulling any one of them away from their stable lives, their jobs, their wives to do what? Come hold his hand and tell him he’s okay? No. Not them.

He finds a different bar than his usual and takes a hike, all slouched and curled in against himself. It takes him weeks to get to the bar itself. His first few tries end in a sharp panic, running back home and drinking anything he can get his hands on and passing out on his back on the couch. Maybe he’ll puke in his sleep and drown like Hendrix, only being found when the neighbors start to complain about the smell. The crushing loneliness doesn’t go away though, and it’s eventually enough to push him into the bar.

It’s seedy, which is probably good. No one at a place that’s _not_ seedy would look at him twice. Richie has no doubts that he looks like a complete sack of shit. He's maintained _a_ level of personal hygiene at least, and his agent drags him to a barber anytime he’ll be heading onstage with a reminder that his look is _disheveled_ not _homeless_. He doesn’t look great but it’s not like he has high standards. He’s looking for a g- for someone who won’t ask his name and doesn’t have any reservations about fucking a guy so drunk he doesn’t know what day it is. 

The first few times, he drags a guy out the back of the bar to blow him next to a reeking dumpster and the hands in his hair are almost like an embrace. It’s certainly more companionship than the bottom of an empty bottle provides. He doesn’t even get off, but he feels less alone, he tells himself the entire time he walks home. He had a human connection today! That sounds like the kind of bullshit he should tick off as an accomplishment. 

He doesn’t know what the guy’s name was by the time he’s home, passed out alone. 

After that he brings guys home with him and it’s much easier that way. They fuck in his bedroom and he kicks them out right after and vomits in the shower. 

It doesn’t happen often, only when he feels too completely alone and particularly weak willed. 

_It’s fine and he’s fine_. 

He’s at his bar, the usual one, one night when he catches himself looking around at the people surrounding him dazedly. There’s an angled mirror above the bar that he’s been thinking about all night. Why is there a mirror above the bar? Is it so people drinking can look at the male bartender’s ass? That’s what Richie has been using it for. Part of his bizarre practice skirting the edge of self-loathing and desperation. He makes brief eye contact with a guy sitting down the bar, with friends but clearly not listening to them at all. He’s buttoned up, hair cropped and neatly parted and face clean shaven and he looks just like- Richie rips his eyes away. Absolutely not. 

“This seat taken?” someone asks.

Richie turns and sees the oldest living man he’s ever witnessed in his life resting a hand on the barstool next to his. He gestures with an open palm, a nonverbal ‘go for it’ and watches the man climb up with a surprising agility for someone so hunched and brittle-looking. 

He has a drink handed to him in no time like he’s some regular, but Richie’s never seen him before and he sees the inside of this bar with some frequency. 

“Anyone ever tell you you look like shite?” the old man asks. 

The shock of it makes Richie laugh and it feels wrong somehow, until he remembers it just feels strange because he can’t remember the last time he laughed at all. Was it in Derry? In the hospital with Eddie cracking jokes while he healed? Before that, even? At dinner with everyone, before Stan showed up, soaking in the joy of being surrounded by his oldest dearest friends?

“Yeah, probably.” Richie chuckles into the rim of his glass. 

He looks back up at the weird angled mirror and, this time, lets his eyes catch his own reflection. It’s something he, consciously or not, has not let himself do for a long time. He does look like shite, as the old man so gently put it. His beard is scruffy and overgrown and he looks bloated and grey from months of a diet that is more alcohol than actual food. He looks like he’s 60 years old, not 41. 

The old man meets his eyes in the mirror and his eyes are deep and dark, twinkling. His hand is unsteady when it lifts his glass to his lips in that way that very very old people get, quaking like they’re feeling all of their years at once, but he doesn’t spill a drop. 

“Anyone ever tell you you’re kinda rude?” he asks back, pulling away from the mirror to look at the old man eye to eye. He’s not completely sure why he does it. 

He cackles loudly, mouth wide open. “Aye, they have, they have.”

Richie grins despite himself. Something about this batshit old man is killing him. 

“So have you found it, then?” he asks Richie. At his questioning glance, he elaborates. “Looks like you’re searchin’ real hard for a solution in a bottle, have you found it?”

Richie shrugs halfheartedly. “Not so far.”

“Ah,” the old man hums. “You ask me the only thing you find in a bottle is more problems.”

Richie thinks about it for one while second and his brain screeches around it like trying to press two magnets of the same polarity together. Thinking about it. Thinking about his problems or thinking _before_ and _after_ is a big no-no. He downs what’s left in his glass in one go. 

“Would you mind-“ the question interrupts before Richie can order another. “Walking an old man home?”

Richie raises his eyebrows at the man. 

“I hate to walk out there late like this. It’s not far,” he insists. 

You walked yourself _here_ , Richie thinks. How is it any harder to walk your way back? What kind of bizarre old man walks to a bar to have one drink and then go home? Just make a drink at home. 

But these streets, while not exactly rough, can get a little wild at times and Richie knows that. He’s seen the crowds of young people trailing through loudly, mostly harmless but you never know. It could just be that Richie looks much scarier than they do, they seem to usually give him a wide berth. 

He glances around the bar one more time. The guy with the neatly brushed hair is gone. 

“Why the hell not.”

Together they pay up and head out, Richie towering over the old man significantly. He’d produced an old-looking bowler hat in a deep forest green from somewhere, Richie hadn’t seen him holding it. 

They walk down the street side by side and Richie listens as the man chatters between whistling an aimless old tune. Sometimes it approaches a familiar song and then veers off wildly into something else. Sometimes he’ll hit three or four notes that ring in Richie’s head like he knows it, but it doesn’t call any memories of radio hits or endless mix tapes forward. So he just doesn’t think about it. 

“Here we are!” The man points at a cruddy old building with, like, a million wooden stairs in front of it. Richie sighs and hooks a hand around his fragile elbow and leads him up the stairs, considering that the man is lucky he’s not more drunk or he’d be dragging them both down the stairs.

“You okay out here?” Richie asks, just to be sure. 

“This is fine.” He pats Richie’s hand at his elbow with cold, crooked fingers. “There’s a good lad.”

“I don’t know about that.” Richie nearly has to physically shrug away the compliment he can hardly stand it. 

“I owe you one, really.” He smiles and it reaches his dark dark eyes, twinkling even more with the reflection of the streetlights in them. “You look like you could use a favor.”

“No, thanks,” Richie says. If this man tries to hand him money he literally doesn’t know what he’ll do. 

“I insist.” He pats Richie’s hand once more and pulls away to unlock his door. “I’ll be giving you a gift, Richie.”

He goes inside and Richie begins the long walk home alone. His vision is significantly less doubled than it would normally be after leaving his bar and he didn’t even catch a chance to buy any coke; this may be why he has the clarity of mind to realize that the old man had called him by name. He could be a fan, of course, but he wasn't exactly part of Richie’s target demographic. Plus fans would more often default to ‘Trashmouth’ or his full name. Something about just _Richie_ too familiar for comfort. 

Whatever. He refuses to think about it any longer, and by the time he’s home he’s more or less forgotten the entire exchange. He passes out in bed without a thought in his mind. 

——

Richie wakes up to hot, damp breath that smells like it belongs to a creature that eats shit puffing into his face. It’s fucking disgusting and it has him wrenching his eyes open, fear already running through him at the thought of what it could be. He’d locked his door before going to sleep, he thinks. Probably. He usually does. Mostly. 

It’s a dog standing on his bed. A French bulldog, panting open-mouthed directly into his own open mouth and eyes. 

He pulls away, disgusted and alarmed. Distracted enough by the presence of a strange and stinky creature that it takes a minute to catalog the state of his body. His mouth isn’t dry and he doesn’t have the sour taste of bile in the back of his throat. The room isn’t spinning like it does when he wakes up still drunk, nor is it pulsing painfully around him like on the mornings when he wakes up too hungover to function. His mind is more clear than he can remember it being in a very long time. 

His vision is blurred, but something about the color of the place is wrong too. He scrabbles along the mattress and bedside table until his fingers clatter against plastic frames that he shoves onto his face. 

The bedroom he’s in is big and tastefully decorated, two organized bookshelves on either side of a wide closet, minimal clutter, no massive piles of clothing all over the floor. In short: it’s not his bedroom. 

But he’d gone home to _his_ shitty bedroom, hadn’t he? He definitely hadn’t gone home with anyone else, and even if he had no one he’d ever hooked up with would have the matching complete bedspread with patterned accents and matching decorative pillows that this place has. He’d be lucky if those people would even have pillows to begin with. Maybe he’d just… wandered into the wrong apartment by mistake. He doesn’t know and he doesn’t want to stick around to find out. 

He jumps out of bed, scrambling around looking for clothes to throw on so he can make a swift and silent escape. He’d fallen asleep dressed, but now he’s only in boxers and an ugly t-shirt that he definitely doesn’t recognize. The dog stands at the edge of the bed and watches him the entire time, still panting it’s rank breath out into the air. 

“Fuck.” His clothes aren’t on the floor, he can’t find them. “Fuck!”

He turns to dig into the dresser drawer, giving up his search. Wherever he is, someone stole his clothes, and he’s going to return the favor and steal some pants so he can leave without gaining some new public indecency charges. 

“Oh good you’re awake.” An unexpected voice entering the room makes him jump and bang his wrist off the dresser with a loud crash. “Jesus! Relax, I just wanted you to run to Whole Foods with me.”

Richie turns around, rubbing his wrist painfully. He thinks he’s confused when he hears the voice (seriously, Whole Foods?) but it’s nothing compared to when he completes his turn and Eddie Kaspbrak is standing in the doorway of the room looking casual and comfortable. It’s like his brain screeches to a halt after rocketing at top speed, tumbling ass over teakettle until it grinds to a stop. 

“Fuckin’-“ He chokes. “ _HUH_?”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “Whole Foods, moron. We’re running low on actual vegetables and I want to get some of those weird dumplings from the food bar.”

“Um.” Richie stares and stares, completely unable to wrap his mind around the current situation. 

“You’re hopeless,” Eddie says, exasperated. “Make your coffee, I’ll walk Ted.” 

He whistles and the tiny dog on the bed stops panting in Richie’s direction and flings himself to the floor with a jangle of collar tags, scrambling on short legs to Eddie’s side. Eddie bends to scratch between his ears and they patter off together down the hallway. 

Okay, so. Okay. So… okay. 

_okay_.

So, Eddie’s here. And a dog is here. And here is…

Richie abandons his station in front of the dresser in his underwear to stomp toward long sheer curtains and rip them aside. Behind them is a set of double french doors leading to a patio filled with cacti and big leafed ferns, lounge chairs under large umbrellas and a small swimming pool. A brick wall encloses the entire space, and out beyond that is the unmistakable view of the Rockies. He’s not even in _LA_ let alone his own apartment. 

Well, shit. He knows he’s been on some substances lately but he hasn’t gone full on _Fear and Loathing_. Not to the degree that would lead to him waking up in a completely different state. 

Maybe it’s just like, what’s it called… lucid dreaming. Because even if he _had_ done a _Fear and Loathing_ and drove himself into the desert on a drug binge, it still wouldn’t do anything to explain what Eddie is doing here. 

So he shuffles back to the dresser and grabs a pair of jeans, finding them much more fitted than his usual style but unmistakably his size. 

Outside of the room he finds a comfortably sized house. Everything is tidy but not sterile, it’s obviously lived in by the mess of pillows and throw blanket on the soft looking sofa and a few dishes scattered around the small kitchen counters. It’s worlds away from his shitty apartment in K-town that is probably only furnished at all because it had all been done before- before the Losers' reunion. 

At a loss, the easiest thing to do is follow instructions. Eddie told him to make coffee, so he makes coffee. And after a while, the front door swings open and the frantic clicking of dog feet come running in to hop around his ankles under the tall table Richie is sitting at, too much excited energy to fit into his tiny dog body. Eddie trails in a moment after, wearing bright salmon-colored shorts and sandals and a striped tank top and looking so… _un-Eddie-like_ it’s bizarre. He’s tan, too. Not that he got to see much of how tan or not tan he was last time they were together, but he hadn’t been this golden-skinned, Richie knows that with certainty. 

“Oh, good.” Eddie toddles across the room and leans on elbows against the table, right in Richie’s space. He grabs the mug out of Richie’s loose grip and steals a drink. 

Richie catches sight of the ring on his left hand finger against the black of the mug with a familiar pang of dread, the very same he’d felt all that time ago in Maine. It makes him glance away, unable to look too long like it’s the sun and it’ll blind him for daring to look directly at it. 

The mug is placed back onto the table and Richie grabs it quickly like he’ll be able to feel the warmth of Eddie’s hands on the ceramic like he can feel the warmth of him pressed against his side. His hand clinks against the mug and he- he has a matching ring on his own left hand. 

He startles, sloshing coffee out onto the table and making Eddie tut while he grabs a towel to soak up the mess. 

“Let’s go.” Eddie makes a ‘hurry up’ gesture at Richie and his slow drinking. “We can stop at in n out on the way back if you want.”

They’re in Palm Springs, Richie discovers on the drive to Whole Foods to get the ‘weird dumplings’ Eddie is so fixated on. It explains the desert outside the bedroom door and the view of the Rockies in the distance and literally no other singular thing about his situation, but it feels nice to have something checked off. He also discovers that Eddie has road rage, screaming out his window at an old man for not using his turn signal and grumbling about traffic in a bizarre juxtaposition to the ‘car tunes’ playlist Richie had hit play on that seems to be 90% Jimmy Buffett. 

So like. They live in Palm Springs together and are married to each other. Shit’s wild.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I promise no chapter after the first one will ever be that miserable again and I ALSO promise that no misery will be left not paid off

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no content warnings this time around! Internalized homophobia will have a role throughout the story as a whole, but I guess it's best to just say I'm not an angst for the sake of angst type of person. Anyway settle in for the long haul this is gonna be a big boy.

They don’t stop at In-N-Out on their way home from grocery shopping, but Eddie sings idly along to “Cheeseburger in Paradise” as he drives and Richie wouldn’t do anything to stop that if he could help it. He just watches him as long as he thinks he can get away with it, looking at the relaxed expression on his face, so far off from what Eddie had looked like in Derry. The evidence of that Eddie is still present in the lines of his forehead and the neat trim of his hair, but it’s like he’s a bizarre mirror-world Eddie Kaspbrak. It’s difficult to wrap his mind around the truth of what he’s seeing or how he’s seeing it. 

They get back to the comfortably sized pale blue-painted little house, perfectly landscaped all around and tastefully decorated outside. The only exception being a doormat outside with such an obnoxiously bold pattern on it that could only have been his idea. 

They also have a ‘Beware of Dog’ sign hanging outside which, having seen Ted at work, is the most laughable thing of all.

Speaking of, Ted greets them both happily at the door, tiny body in a frenzy and showing off a stuffed Lamb Chop puppet with pride. Eddie steals away the one snooty reusable shopping bag in Richie’s hand and carries everything away toward the kitchen. 

“I’ll put the food away, you go work,” Eddie says while unloading. The bags contain _so_ much more green than Richie has bought for himself anytime recently. “Make sure your agent has our dates blocked off, okay?”

“Uh, yeah! Okay.” Richie nods and scampers away with one more weird Whole Foods dumpling in hand. 

Down the hall (Ted spares him a lazy one-eyed glance from the spot he’s made to sleep on the couch) he tries the only other door he hadn’t opened this morning. It’s something of a guest room and office combination with both a desk and a large bed. The desk looks well used, the top is crowded with notes and pads and post its and a laptop sits open in the center. The walls of the room are nearly full of movie posters, which would be the exact kind of interior design choice Richie would expect from himself if they weren’t all cartoons. He likes cartoons, sure, but he likes the ones he grew up watching and none of these posters have a single Thundercat on them. 

And then he catches it. The poster above the desk isn’t just some cartoon; his name is at the top of the poster in big letters. And the one next to it, a poster of a man surrounded by oversized food has his name on it, too. He has to do a double take at another large poster across the room, it also declares RICHIE TOZIER in a large font, but this one also has a large Disney logo above the title. 

Holy shit, he has _Disney_ money? And also, wait, he’s in _kid_ movies? Doing voice work? It’s a long stretch from standup, definitely something he’s never even considered. His brand is not exactly kid-friendly, no matter what scary children in Chinese restaurants might lead a room full of strangers to believe. 

He looks around the desk like somehow the endless scrap papers and trinkets might lay out an explanation of what is happening to him. They don’t magically do that, but he does find several half scribbled notes, a framed picture of him and Eddie in suits, and a purple sobriety token with a large number five in the middle of it displayed on a stand. 

The laptop is covered in stickers featuring the names of multiple cities, most of them hideous and bizarre. It’s thankfully unlocked when he opens it, and begins to flood with email notifications. 

He scrolls through a bit of the most recent, looking for Adam’s familiar name and not finding it. Instead the name Steve appears more than once, the most recent of which is labeled _Re: dates off_. He clicks through to it. 

_Rich,_

_The dates look good, you’ll have a couple recordings before then so rest up. I’ll keep a few travel days clear on each end too. Your calendar will be up to date._

_Steve_

There are a whole mess of emails and it’s not entirely clear which ones are legit and which ones are spam, so he doesn’t touch any of them. Usually Adam just sends him a series of warning texts that a car is on its way to grab him and that’s it. 

One email in particular grabs his attention and he can’t really note why it does, there’s nothing particularly strange about it other than the fact that the name is one he doesn’t recognize, but that’s basically every name in his inbox. His eyes keep being drawn to it in their wandering, though, and so he opens it. 

_Richie,_

_You must surely be feeling a bit confused, eh? No shame there! I find myself confused more times than not some days, you reckon it’s to do with age? Ah, it’s not important I suppose._

_My boy! You’ve done me a kindness and I’m returning the favor. This may seem a bit grand as repayment for walking an old man home, but this is really quite simple._

_I’ve a sense you’ve gone a bit wayward in life, I’ve seen it many a time in a great number of folk. No shame to be had in it, boy! This is nothing more than a chance to see what you can have instead, a chance to set things to rights if you’d like. Use your time here well, you’ll be hearing from me._

Richie tries not to flip his entire shit upon reading and rereading the email two and three more times. He’s in… some kind of alternate reality, or something. He hasn’t had exactly the greatest history with magical beings or whatever, and the revelation that a strange old man he’d walked home as a favor can just _change realities_ on him is a little bit hard to wrap his mind around. 

It doesn’t seem malicious, though, he tries to remind himself over and over. Pennywise never used something as mundane as grocery shopping to hurt him in the past, would never give him something like being _married to Eddie_ even as a tease. It wasn’t his style. He would stick Eddie in front of him and shred him to pieces, would pull Stan into hurting himself again, would tear his family apart. 

Richie looks back down at the band on his left hand finger. He brushes over it with his thumb and finds that it’s a sort of double layered ring, the inside part spinning freely inside of an outer track. It looks well worn, like he must sit there spinning and spinning it with his thumb as he works. It takes some effort, but he manages to pull the ring off of his finger to get a closer look. The skin underneath is paler than the rest of his hand and indented like the ring has been there, unmoving, for years. The ring itself is very plain, even despite the spinning mechanism built into it. He pinches it between his thumb and forefinger to look it over, honestly in a bit of awe over it. There’s an odd texture to the inside of the ring, an engraving that he has to pull close to his face to get a look at. 

R + E

The two letters hit Richie like a physical blow. His worst secret, his most deeply buried memory, under miles of dirt and hate and whiskey. The stupid fucking bridge he’s refused to allow himself to think about since the day he left Derry. 

Eddie knows about the bridge. This Eddie must, at least. 

He wonders if he told Eddie about stopping there on his way home, drawn by some irrational compulsion. How he dug through his duffel bag for the Swiss Army knife he only held onto because of the bottle opener arm and approached the bridge with the full intent of gouging those letters out, digging at them until they were chunks of mulch on the ground, clinging to a desperate hope that that would stop them from haunting him. Forty years old and still scared that someone would see; that Bowers would show up with an axe sticking out of his head and do the same to him. Rip him open and leave his guts for the crows, somehow knowing what the E stood for without being told. 

Does he know that that day, inexplicably, he carved over the letters instead? Refreshing them, bringing them back to life even though the sight of them made him sick. Fleeing as soon as he finished, running through the Bangor airport like the devil was on his tail, fresh splinters in his fingers like a hundred irritating little reminders that he can run all he wants but he can’t leave himself behind. 

Maybe it happened differently here. Maybe he’d taken Eddie to the bridge and shown him in person, a big dramatic confession. It doesn’t sound like something he’d do, but being married in Palm Springs doesn’t sound like something he’d do either so who knows. 

He grabs the picture frame on the desk to look at the photo in it. It must be a wedding picture just by the look of it, they’re both formally dressed and smiling. Richie’s drapes over Eddie’s shoulders like he belongs there, half his face buried in the side of Eddie’s head. 

Eddie looks happy and handsome, but Richie’s eyes keep getting caught on himself in the picture. He looks… content. Just so thoroughly happy and relaxed and so unlike himself it’s like looking at a different person. 

He sets it all aside, slides the ring back onto his finger and tries to settle himself into a calm. Nothing here has tried to kill him so far, he’s aware he’s in a weird alternate reality, this is something he can work with. Just act normal. How hard could it be to just try to blend in? 

The door clicks open and Eddie wanders in, socked feet sliding over the floor and a glass of water in hand. 

“All good?” He leans back against the front of the desk, not quite sitting on it, but something close. He hands Richie the glass and he drinks half in one go.

“Thanks, yeah.” Richie looks him over, interested. He looks good, showing his age in a way someone might describe as _distinguished_ , with a sprinkling of grey hairs at his hairline and handsome crows feet at his eyes. “Steve said the dates are good.”

Good for what, he doesn’t know, but Eddie _had_ asked him about it.

His face lights up with his smile and his shoulders jump a little in surprise. 

“That’s great!” Eddie leans forward and kisses him. Like, on his mouth with his mouth. It’s nothing more than a peck, a kiss with the familiarity of a thousand kisses before it, but it fries Richie’s brain dead. His thoughts nothing more than the high pitched flatline sound from every hospital TV show ever made. 

He’s gaping when Eddie pulls away and he can tell, but he can’t stop himself. Everything he’d just seconds ago been telling himself about _blending in_ and _acting normal_ has gone out the window. He feels mortifyingly close to tears looking up at where Eddie is still standing a bit hunched, seeing the tiny pleased twist to his lips.

“Ugh.” Eddie smushes his hand against Richie’s cheek. “Looking at me like that. No wonder our friends always make gagging noises at you.”

It’s a relief to know, at least, that he’s not behaving out of character enough to set off any alarms for Eddie. It’s doubly a relief to know that Eddie has no doubts here. That he’s used to Richie staring at him like that. 

“Can you blame me?” He asks, really asking like Eddie would actually ever answer him.

He doesn’t answer, but he does kiss him again, and Richie maintains enough presence of mind to kiss him back. He kisses Eddie and the world doesn’t fall apart around him, Pennywise doesn’t jump out from under the bed, nothing bad happens at all. They just kiss and it feels nice. 

“I’m-“ Eddie presses one more kiss to Richie’s lips, and another at the corner of his mouth. “I’m gonna go tell Ben.”

xxxx

He breaks into his own cell phone seeking distraction in the morning so he doesn’t need to watch Eddie sleepily wander the room getting ready. (The lock code is Eddie’s birthday which is just mortifying) and finds what he’s looking for in there. A somewhat regularly active group chat text called LOSERS that looks to recently be more pictures than actual texts, some of themselves and some of bizarre memes, sometimes just a line of emojis he can’t even decipher. Luckily Eddie is in the shower when he finds and opens an ongoing text string with Stan that has a picture of him holding a fat baby in his arms that looks just like him, lifting one of her tiny wrists up to make her wave at the camera, because it makes him cry like a baby.

He ends up texting the group a picture of Ted where his head is resting on Richie’s hip once he finally manages to stop his alligator tears, now desperate for a distraction from his distraction. Beverly replies first, with an image of a young Keanu Reeves that has a large “excellent” caption on it, and Richie has to stuff his face into his pillow to stifle his shocked laugh. He and Eddie have a dog named after _Bill and Ted_. If he had any remaining doubts that this is the case, they would have vanished a few minutes later when Bill sends a series of eye rolling emojis. 

He doesn’t dig into his other texts right away. Eddie’s been in the shower for long enough that he should be finished soon and Richie will not be able to stop himself if he starts crying again so soon.

xxxx

He discovers, with a little digging, that the dates Eddie was so concerned about are for the Annual Losers Club Reunion. It’s scribbled in huge letters on the calendar two weeks out and the sight of it sends a nauseating shock of anxiety through his gut. 

He doesn’t want to go to a reunion. He catches himself beginning to panic, his usual thoughts that he has nothing worth sharing with his friends and he doesn’t want them to see him so unhinged begin to swirl. But then he remembers _this_ Richie has it great. He has his name on movie posters and lives in a house in the desert where he’s married to Eddie Kaspbrak of all people and they have a dog together. This Richie has nothing to dread when it comes to seeing his friends. 

He spends every moment he gets alone for the next several days digging through everything in the house looking for any details he can find about him and Eddie. He finds actual physical photo albums one afternoon, something he didn’t even know people had anymore, and gets lost for hours looking at them. He finds photos from Ben and Beverly’s wedding, something on the more casual end of the spectrum based on what everyone is wearing. He’s standing grinning at Beverly’s side in one of them and standing behind her in another, securing a necklace around her neck and ugly crying. He rolls his eyes at himself for crying before the ceremony even started and allowing it to be captured on film. 

There are a lot of pictures of the Losers together in big groups and in smaller gatherings. He gets caught up for a long time on a picture of him, Eddie, Stan, and a light-haired woman who must be Stan’s wife sitting around somewhere, he can’t tell where. Stan in the picture is smiling, he looks so content with his wife leaning against his side, nothing like the exhausted sad man Richie can still see vividly in his memory. He hopes his- the real Stan is this happy, wherever he is, without them. 

He gets busted once when Eddie gets home from a run earlier than expected, sitting with one of the books open on his criss crossed legs on the couch, coffee on the table long gone cold. He doesn't question him, though, instead just joins in at Richie’s side and looks with him. 

He sits close, still flushed and breathless even as he’s chugging a chilled water. Richie only allows himself to watch the bob of his throat from the corner of his eyes, unsure what might happen if he confronted the view head on. He’s wearing a tank top- or what actually looks like a tshirt with the sleeves cut off -with a giant banana printed on it that declares _International Banana Museum!_ in a matching yellow text. 

“Oh, remember this?” 

Remarkably, it’s a picture that he does remember. A photobooth strip from Derry of all of them crammed into the tiny space together smiling and making faces and giving each other bunny ears. He can’t remember the movie they saw that day, but he remembers the joy of it, of being there with the people he cared about most in the world. The exhilaration of Eddie’s grinning cheek pressed against his own because they were so cramped together, making his palms sweaty and gross.

“Last year we could all fit in there together.” Richie’s smile is sentimental and soft, unable to tear his eyes away to see if Eddie looks the same next to him. 

“Yeah,” he agrees, grouchy. “Cause some people had to grow like a whole foot over the summer.”

It kills Richie laughing, the thirty-year-old bitterness still there and strong. He can remember in a way he hasn’t been allowing himself to for months. He remembers starting school again in the fall after that terrible summer, all of them changed but healing, forgetting. He started high school all limbs and feet, gone pointy-faced and rough-skinned and hormonal, and somehow Eddie had been jealous of it. Eddie, who had another year of baby fat in him yet, looking up at him between classes and scowling about it. 

“We were so cute and little.” He hasn’t thought about that in a lifetime, either. Being so young and, well, maybe innocent would be a stretch of the imagination, but something like it. “Especially you.”

“Oh, hilarious, I was little, ha ha.” Eddie rolls his eyes.

“I meant the cute part.” Saying it out loud, even about something in the past, even sitting here in a reality where he’s _married_ to Eddie, sends something squirming in his gut. It’s nerve wracking and scary to face, but with the words out of his mouth they also take a weight with them, however miniscule it may be. “You were cute.”

Eddie grins, sitting small, all curled up in his legs at Richie’s side. One blunt fingertip reaches out to prod at Richie’s temple, tickling back over his ear to tug at his hair. 

“You were cute, too,” he says. “I know because I spent all of freshman year algebra thinking about holding your hand.” 

He says it like it’s a known thing, some old joke between them about being a pair of lovesick teenagers, but it’s fuckin news to _him_. There is no way Eddie had a crush on him back then, not when he was all big feet and gross ‘your mom’ jokes. (Compared to now? A cynical part of him thinks. When he’s all big feet and made up girlfriend jokes?)

“I had no idea.” He’s mumbling, too shocked to really think anything else, too stupid-brained to think carefully about responding appropriately. 

“Yeah,” Eddie confirms. “That’s kinda the point of a secret crush is that it’s secret.”

The heavy squirming eel in his gut dissipates into hundreds of butterflies. God, being with Eddie really is like being a teenager with a crush again. He’d held out hope that Derry was a fluke, how he saw Eddie after a couple decades and his first response was to bang a gong and be as annoying as possible, but apparently not. That feeling spreads up his spine into his neck when Eddie pulls him close into a kiss, fingers pressing into his skull. 

Kissing Eddie is distressingly addicting. It starts chaste, but Richie is greedy for it and licks at the seam of his lips in an instant. Drawing him in, needing the feeling of Eddie’s tongue on his, of his firm chest under his hand. 

It’s Eddie humming a surprised sound against his lips that pulls him away. 

Surprise isn’t good, not in this case. He pushed too much, too far, too fast. It’s like he’s had an ice bucket dumped on his head, freezing through his nerves. His hands wrench away from Eddie’s body at once.

“Sorry.” He clears his throat and realizes belatedly that apologizing to the person you’re married to for kissing them is weird. “I mean, you probably want to shower.”

Eddie looks thrown off but not upset. He gives Richie’s hair one final light tug, tucking it away behind his ear where it refuses to stay. “Yeah, I probably fucking reek,” he agrees. 

Through a strained breath of a half-laugh, Richie agrees. He doesn’t move when Eddie pads softly away alone to the bathroom, doesn’t return to the photos, he sits there and stews in his guilt, feeling filthy. 

xxxx

On his third morning in Palm Springs, he gets a text from Steve, who is apparently his full-time agent, telling him to be ready for a cab in an hour. His phone calendar informs him that he has a lengthy recording session booked just a little ways out of town. 

Eddie’s already gone, so he dresses quickly and makes his way to the waiting car. It’s been a pleasant surprise to find that this Richie’s life that he’s stepped into still has a similar dress sense to him; meaning, yes, hideous patterned shirts. His clothes are more fitted though, and his body less neglected overall. He doesn’t look in the mirror and suddenly see a hot 30 year old Richie or anything (and he had been hot as shit at 30, don’t get it twisted), but he looks good. He’s not grey skinned and glassy eyed, for one thing. He’s thinner, clean-shaven, has some grey hairs at his temples but he finds himself not hating it. He looks like a person who sometimes eats vegetables. His hair is still a mess, but if 40 years couldn’t fix that he thinks probably magic can’t either. 

He leaves Ted with an awkward head pat and a ‘be good’ that gets him a heavy dog sigh in response. 

He folds into the back seat of the car comfortably. And only because he’s actively avoiding looking at his phone (Stan texted a picture of his fat baby and he can’t start his day crying again) does he catch the back of his driver’s head in a familiar green bowler hat. 

“Hey!” He jolts up in his seat, back arrow-straight in his shock. “It’s you!”

The driver turns around to shoot him a calm look before he returns to casually pulling out of the driveway. “Aye, it’s me, who else would it be?”

“I don’t- I’m-“ Richie gawks. “What the fuck is this? What the fuck are _you_?”

“Calm down there, boy, shouting will damage your voice.” They’re making a steady pace through the city and Richie can only hope they’re going the right way, because he’s been to Palm Springs maybe once in his life and has no idea. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

“What are you here for?” He's not even sure he wants to know the answer in all honesty. He’d long ago decided that if he’d lived a life of ignorance about Pennywise and children continued to die, he would have been much happier. 

“I help people,” the old man says over his shoulder. “People who lose their way.”

Richie is sitting on the edge of his seat, arms gripping the passenger seat in front of him and making the leather squeak. “I’ve had enough _weird shit_ in my lifetime, thanks, put me back.”

“Put you back?” The man’s bushy grey eyebrows bunch up high on his forehead. “You prefer the other place?”

He tries to answer yes, really, because he wants to go home. Not home, necessarily, but away from any and all magical interference, definitely. But the response gets caught in his throat. He doesn’t prefer home, who would? But… “This isn’t mine,” he says, miserable. 

The man tuts and looks in the rear view at Richie all slumped and frowning. “I didn’t go through all the effort making this for you to not even see it.”

“Making…” Richie feels dizzy, he’s so confused. “You made _this_? What this?”

“Ah, right, right. Of course.” He clears his throat and makes a right turn. “You’re not the first to find this difficult. This is for you, sonny! A chance to see what life could be for someone so low on hope is a gift indeed.”

“So you, what-“ Richie looks at his surroundings. “Cooked up a new reality for me?”

“Oh, no, no.” He shakes his head gravely. “Not for a simple favor, this is just a temporary looksee.”

“Like- Some kind of fucked up ghost of Christmas future?” Richie asks, bewildered. 

The old man cackles. “Now that’s a new one! I like that!” He scratches at his chin with one hand and mumbles to himself, Richie can only make out “not far off.”

“Don't get caught up in the details, now,” he presses on. “Just enjoy it while it lasts, eh?”

The car ride has his nerves so jumbled up in stress and shock of unexpectedly seeing this old ancient man again that he’s completely forgotten to be stressed about being taken to a job he doesn’t know how to do. That is, until he’s out standing on the sidewalk in front of a nondescript building and the car has zoomed away without so much as a goodbye. He gets hustled in as soon as he opens the door, shuffled around, handed a water, and lead away into a recording booth by a small harried woman who doesn’t do any more than greet him and leave him, rushing off to her next thing. 

The whole debacle is a mess at first, but the project is thankfully new and so he doesn’t have some unknown past performances to live up to. He’s directed into finding a voice, nerdy, no not that nerdy, someone smart but not an asshole about it, until he finally does manage to nail it and it feels good. The directors look pleased and they run through pages and pages of lines. Doing standup always made sense to him as his entry into comedy, of course, but he’d never even considered voice acting. It seems obvious now that he’s doing it. Voices have always been his thing, as much as he would drive the Losers crazy as kids by doing The British Guy and The Cowboy, he has a skill for it. It’s not easy, but it’s _really_ fun.

He doesn’t think about seeing the old man again until much later, on a break from recording during which he is forbidden to speak. He texts Eddie back and forth about how things are going, joking about the shitty catering the place has for lunch and bouncing around recipe ideas for tonight’s dinner. _Don’t think about it too deeply,_ the man in the bowler hat said. Enjoy it for the time he has. He is… mostly… enjoying it. Maybe, he allows himself to think, this will let him get his Eddie thing out of his system. Play pretend with a magical facsimile for a little while, get over it, and move on. The real Eddie will never have to know.

Now if he could actually muster up the guts to do half the things he _wants_ to get out of his system without puking all over himself, that would be awesome. 

\----

Eddie works at a bookstore a couple days a week, Richie finds, even though he almost definitely does not need to. (Again, he has _Disney money_ , what the fuck). He often tells stories about customers and tourists while laughing, and seeing him so entertained gets Richie chuckling too. Richie gets it, though, they would probably both go insane if they were inside all day with nothing else to do. 

Plus on days when Eddie works and Richie digs through the details of this life like a fiend, he tends to come home and drag Richie away from his computer or his notes and into the small pool outside. No point in having it if they never use it, he reminds Richie one afternoon, already spraying spf a million into his hands to rub on his face. He discovers an entirely new brand of self loathing torture by the pool, watching Eddie reapply sunblock every hour from the corner of his eyes. It’s not so different from the complex ritual that allows him to find hookups at his shady bar, only made worse by the fact that he’s sober and this torture is catering specifically to his individual weaknesses. 

They get inside late one particular evening and Richie takes his time dawdling around while Eddie beelines to shower, lingering in the kitchen finding snacks mostly. He eventually does wander to their bedroom to shower and change, still damp flip flops slapping against his feet loudly. Eddie is standing stark naked in front of the dresser when he opens the door, digging around inside a drawer looking for something. 

Richie jolts like the doorknob sent a shock of electricity up his arm and into his chest. “Oh, shit!” 

It’s half a second, if even that, but it’s enough. It’s enough to see the stark tan lines low on his hips and high on his thighs, higher than the swim trunks he was wearing all afternoon. To see where he’s toned, where dark hair scatters over his chest and belly, where he’s soft and thoughtlessly exposed between his thighs. It’s such an absentminded nudity that Richie struggles to connect it to any version of the high-strung Eddie Kaspbrak he knows.

He mumbles through an awkward apology and disappears into the bathroom where he showers his empty husk of a body, his soul left floating around somewhere in the stratosphere never to return. 

xxxx

Richie spends a lot of his weekend at the recording studio, delivered by non-bowler hat-wearing drivers and once by himself on a day Eddie declares that he won’t need the car. Apparently they hadn’t been joking when they said he’d have to squeeze a lot in before he left for their reunion. It doesn’t stop being fun, though, and Eddie meets him at the door with honeyed teas to soothe his throat when he gets home. 

They’re by the pool one of these afternoons, not even swimming but lounging. Richie has to actively concentrate on not choking on some mango-based throat-soothing smoothie when Eddie collapses into a lounge chair in shorts that obviously are to blame for the tan line he witnessed just the other night. 

“Hey, shit for brains.” Eddie whistles sharply at him after a minute. “Eyes up here.”

Oh shit. Uh. Shit. He focused too hard on not choking and not hard enough on not staring at Eddie’s legs. 

“Ben said the house is all good to go,” Eddie continues on unphased. He’s holding a tablet in his lap, tapping away. “They’re gonna go a little early. _We_ should book flights.”

“Okay. Where-” Richie struggles for a moment to find a way to finally ask where they’re going without _asking where they’re going_. “Where are we flying into?”

“Oh! I looked into it.” Eddie shifts to face Richie more, looking excited to impart his knowledge. “Apparently Norfolk is closer, but Raleigh to the Outer Banks is more scenic, so I thought it might be nice.”

He looks so excited to suggest it, eyes wide and dark and smile dimpling into deep smile lines. It’s cute in a very kid-at-Christmas kind of way. All over a few hours of a scenic car trip together.

Maybe it’s because of that excitement, maybe it’s because he needs more time between leaving Palm Springs and seeing his friends again, he doesn’t know. He gets the idea in his mind and it exits his mouth in the same exact moment. This should not be surprising after four decades of doing precisely this.

“Why don’t we just drive from here?” He asks. 

Eddie looks sceptical. “Really?”

“Why not?” When in doubt, double down; the Richie Tozier fuckin life motto. “Nothing better than a cross-country road trip, huh?”

“It’ll take a few extra days.” Eddie tip-taps more at the tablet in his hands. He must be looking at their calendar, because he counts off on his fingers “But I bet we can do it if we haul ass.”

“Eds.” Richie grins. His eyes trail, not again to Eddie’s legs but to the side of the chair so the exposed tanned skin is all there in his peripheral vision. “I’ll haul your ass anywhere you want.”

Eddie scoffs and Richie can hear the eye roll that goes with it even if he can’t see it with his intense study of not-Eddie’s-thighs. 

“Oh shit!” Eddie sits up very straight, very suddenly.

“What?” Richie asks, anxiety finally dragging his eyes back to Eddie’s tense face. 

“I have less than a week to plan a cross country road trip!” Eddie says as if it’s obvious that this should cause such serious alarm. “Where should we stop? The Grand Canyon might be too far north, I need a map. You start thinking of ideas!”

The last part is shouted over his shoulder as Eddie vanishes back in through the bedroom doors, followed by an always curious Ted tapping along at his heels. Richie can hear him still talking to himself loudly from inside the house, but can’t make out anything he’s actually saying. Probably listing more potential destinations to himself and plotting out some road trip with a million stops. 

Richie spends the entire next morning while Eddie is at the bookstore texting him links to every tourist trap giant yarn ball and ghost-town destination on route 40 he can find. After ten links in a row, Eddie finally responds. 

‘ _send me one more giant yarn ball and I’ll shove a giant yarn ball up your ass_.’

Then,

‘how do you feel about Roswell?’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> behaemoth @ tumblr for me  
> qianwanshi @ tumblr for fic


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was trying to wait and post on my birthday friday but I've decided that patience is for idiots and I'm posting now.
> 
> So speaking of Stan's [adorable](https://qianwanshi.tumblr.com/post/190234453033/i-cant) fat baby..... I'm weak. 
> 
> Note the rating change  
> CW for alcohol abuse (details in end notes)

He starts to feel like he’s adapting to life with Eddie by the time a week together has passed. Living with Eddie is surprisingly easy. He’s imagined it in the past and it was always a little bit sterile, uptight; Eddie cleaning maniacally and keeping everything strictly regimented. It’s not like he had a lot to work with in his imagination, he doesn’t know how marriages work, so it always came out like a shitty early 2000s sitcom: Eddie the nagging wife and Richie the shlubby useless husband. Eddie getting sick of his messes, getting fed up with his disorganization, getting tired of _him_. 

It’s not that, though. Eddie has schedules, sure, for laundry cycles and whether or not it’s recycling week for the trash collection, but those are all useful. He’s not stuffy or demanding, and if they leave a dirty dish or two in the sink overnight, he doesn’t flip his shit. 

It’s like they’re roommates, which is objectively rad and something he’d also spent a lot of time and energy imagining as a teenager when the concept of ‘ _college dorms_ ’ first entered his thought space. A vague image of the two of them in a room like the bedroom he already had (he didn’t know what dorms looked like, like, at all), staying up all night talking and laughing and listening to his vast amount of mixtapes that he made, meticulously pausing and starting his recordings off of the radio. (His daydreams never contained all that much studying really, so maybe he barely understood what college was either.)

Anyway, it’s kind of like that all come true except they’re old-ish and there is no homework and they have a nice Bluetooth sound system in the house so Richie doesn’t have to regularly wind up overplayed tapes with a pencil eraser. The music is all the same though, which is either very sad or very awesome. 

Oh and they only have one large bed that they sleep in together, but he thinks he’s getting used to waking up next to Eddie, too. It still feels wrong, in a sense. He knows it’s not _real_ necessarily, but still, it’s a bit like he’s tricking the Eddie he knows into sleeping with him. It feels like facing off with a sci-fi philosophical dilemma about the morality of sometimes making out with a willing clone of your close friend who is married to a woman in reality. He oscillates wildly between crushing guilt and the belief that it’s harmless, nothing more than a dream that he has no reason to feel guilty for. (Like the Very Awkward dream he’d had featuring Bill when they were in high school that he doesn’t think about.)

The result is that he’s hot and cold with Eddie and he knows it. Accepting over breakfast that he’s in no worse position than indulging in a dream and pressing Eddie into the countertop to kiss him deeply, relishing in the gasping laugh Eddie lets out against his lips. At other times freezing up, horrified, like when Eddie straddles him in a lounge chair next to the pool in the sun and he scampers away with a piss-poor excuse about needing the bathroom. 

It’s a stress on his sanity, and it all comes to a head for Richie one night before bed. Eddie’s still laughing as he pulls out his blankets at some half-assed impression Richie was doing of Steve after being told ‘actually we’re leaving four days earlier than expected’. They can still hear Ted’s loud snores from where they left him on the couch, passed out while they watched some bad made for TV movie.

“I was thinking about Arizona!” Eddie calls out to Richie where he’s brushing his teeth (and quickly changing clothes) in the bathroom. 

He takes his time responding, knowing from experience that if he does it through a frothy mouth it’ll just make Eddie gag.

“What about Arizona?” He steps back out into the room and falls onto his side of the bed, leaving a wide expanse between him and Eddie. 

Eddie, propped up on his side smiling at him, chin held on his hand. “We should stop somewhere. I read about this town full of wild donkeys not too far from here.”

“ _You_ want to go to a town filled with wild animals?” Richie is, to say the least, sceptical. 

“Sure.” Eddie shrugs like he’s always so casual. (Even bizarro mirror world Eddie is decidedly not casual). “You might find a long-lost relative of yours.”

Richie laughs too quickly to school his face into something convincingly hurt. He tries anyway. “Are you calling me a jackass?”

“You just never know.” Eddie’s lips twitch and shake out of his own concentrated serious look and into a smile. 

“Sure. Donkey town,” Richie agrees. “Let’s go”

It’s so easy to talk to Eddie like this that Richie forgets, sometimes, that this is a marriage. That he’s joking and sharing a familiar teasing eye contact while sharing _their_ bed in _their_ house. This isn’t a childhood sleepover or a decades late reunion where he can poke fun and tease and run away to the relative safety of his hotel room. He has nowhere to go.

Richie forces his eyes away from Eddies, as dark and warm and addicting as they are. He falls back and rolls over, ready to feign sleep as quickly as possible. This had been his approach for the last week, and it’s served him pretty well overall. Tonight, though, Eddie rolls right with him and slides snug against his back. It’s how they’ve woken up a few mornings, and Richie can distantly admit that it’s nice even if he never before found much comfort in being the little spoon. They usually fall asleep in their own space, though.

One arm drapes over Richie’s middle, which, fine, he can fall asleep like this. Probably. He’s not going to bite Eddie’s head off for cuddling up to his husband. Eddie’s hand shifts and tickles in the same moment as he presses a kiss to Richie’s spine, fingers finding and trailing along the waistband of Richie’s sleep shorts. Eddie says something in his ear, but it’s drowned out by his own heartbeat thudding loudly in his temples. As soon as one of Eddie’s fingers brushes against the skin of Richie’s lower stomach, he reacts without thinking. His hand wraps around Eddie’s wrist like a vise, keeping him still while he tries desperately to keep his breathing under control.

“Rich?”

“Sorry, I’m just-” He forces himself to adjust his grip on Eddie’s arm, stop trying to grind his bones together and grab his hand instead. He pulls Eddie’s hand up to his chest and holds snug, hoping his palm isn’t disgustingly sweaty. “I’m just tired.” 

“Okay.” Eddie presses his palm flat against Richie’s chest and kisses against his jaw once. He says nothing else, asks no questions, and eventually falls asleep with his face buried between Richie’s shoulder blades. 

\----

Richie wakes up blessedly alone feeling no better than he had before going to sleep. He knows one truth he can’t deny, and it makes him want to fall back into unconsciousness where he didn’t have to face it. 

Eddie is going to expect to have sex with his husband at some point. 

It’s obvious sometimes, in how Eddie looks at him and how, last night, he touched him.

The thought settles like a boulder in his gut, weighing him down until he can’t move from the bed, paralyzed. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so pathetic. He’s forty entire years old and the thought of sleeping with someone feels like he’s being marched to the executioner’s block.

But it isn’t just _someone_. It’s _Eddie_.

It’s not like he’s had a reassuring amount of success, but he’s fucked _people_. Maybe not sober, but he’s _done_ it. 

The difference, he guesses, is that he cares about Eddie. A lot. More than he’d like to admit normally. It’s something he actively avoids thinking about and he was comfortable with that. More or less. 

They _are_ married, though, and he’d be hard-pressed to imagine a marriage with Eddie that doesn’t include a vast and satisfying sex life.

He _wants to_. He can admit that. Not easily, but he knows he wants to.

But _can_ he? 

He tries to think about it for a while, he has the time this morning to do that. He thinks about Eddie, _this_ Eddie, in his shorts by the pool or in his tank tops in the kitchen and how he looks all bright eyed and messy haired in the mornings. He thinks about how sometimes when they kiss Eddie wraps around his shoulders and presses close, or the time he’d walked in on him changing. Eddie has a nice body, it’s something visible even while he is fully clothed, but that had really shown everything and seared it into his mind’s eye. 

But thinking about touching that body and seeing him naked and flushed and gasping has his heart racing in a way he can’t discern as good or bad. He’s clammy, anxiety rattling his bones and making him feel like he might die. His body can’t decide if it’s horny or nauseous when he ventures to consider being _inside_ Eddie’s body or Eddie touching him back. 

So Richie does what he always does when he’s too stressed to function.

Richie gets drunk.

Well, first he hauls his ass out of bed and hails an uber to the nearest liquor store, still wearing pajamas. He grabs the first bottle of whiskey he sees and hustles to the checkout. He groans loud enough to draw the attention of a woman in the next line over at the sight of a familiar old man waiting to scan his bottle.

“What are you doing, Richie?” He asks.

“Can you fuck off?” Richie bangs the bottle onto the conveyor belt between them. “Just for like, five minutes?”

“You don’t want this.” The old man in his stupid fucking grocery store uniform apron says like he knows anything at all.

“Uh, yes, I do.” Richie channels his best disdainful teenager voice. “That’s why I came here to buy it.”

The old man looks down at the bottle, unsteady fingers wrapping around the neck of it. “This won’t solve anything, you know that.”

“Can you just-” Richie’s voice holds a treacherous shake. “I have a car waiting.”

He doesn’t move, and Richie is left to drop a handful of cash onto the surface between them and grab the bottle back. It’s overpaying and he doesn’t care. He cannot listen to one more moment of dialogue about his poor choices. 

_Then_ Richie gets drunk. He’s chugging before the front door is even shut behind him, ignoring the burn in his throat. It’ll feel better, he tells himself. He can stop thinking. 

Ted scampers over to him, running in circles around his ankles, a sign he has learned is what Eddie calls his pee dance. He’s not a complete asshole, so he takes one more drink and leashes Ted up to go outside. It’s out there in the bright sun that he realizes he’s already significantly more drunk than expected. This body hasn’t had a drink in five years, he remembers, of course he’s already drunk. 

After he does his business, Ted leads him dutifully home, completely unaware that Richie is struggling behind him. Richie shuffles with his hands in his pockets, shoulders up to his ears, all the way back to their little blue house.

Back in the kitchen, Richie engages in a staring contest with the still mostly-full bottle sitting on the counter. 

He’s drunk, thoughts swimming unsteadily but not in the way that he’s used to. Not in the way he was chasing after. Instead of becoming intangible nothings, they’re swirling dark clouds that weigh heavy in his mind. He guzzled a bunch of alcohol to stop thinking about it all, stop thinking about _Eddie_ , but instead Eddie is all he can think about. He can’t help picturing Eddie’s disappointed face, or of the five-year token in the office that he’d done nothing to earn but can’t stop looking at whenever he goes in there, even _Ted_ is looking at him sadly. ‘This won’t solve anything,’ that old jerk asshole said, and it’s not. He feels just as bad as he did this morning only now his vision is swimming and his limbs don’t want to cooperate with his brain. 

“Fuck!” he hisses to himself. He grabs the bottle in his fist again and brings it to his lips. But he can’t lift it. He can’t do it. “Fuck!”

The rest of the bottle swirls down the kitchen sink drain and Richie watches with bleary eyes. The glass bottle is shoved deep into the garbage, hidden under paper towels and take out containers from the weekend. 

He paces the living room under Ted’s watchful gaze until he stubs his toes painfully against the couch and sits down. He’s still drunk when Eddie gets home, not long later, curled up in agony on the couch, anxiety churning in his stomach. 

“Rich?” Eddie flip-flops steadily toward him. “Babe? You okay?”

One hand slides across Richie’s shoulders. He curls even tighter into himself until that churning becomes too much and he launches out of his seat, a cold sweat breaking out over his face. He shoots to the bathroom, ignoring Eddie calling out after him, and empties his stomach into the toilet. 

Eddie skids into the doorway. “Richie, do I need to be calling an ambulance?”

Richie groans with his face pressed against the cool ceramic. “No.” He’s too relieved by the lack of rolling in his stomach to remember to be anxious about Eddie standing there looking at him.

“Hang on.” Footsteps tap away and back quickly and Eddie reappears with a glass of water he holds out to Richie. “What’d you eat?” 

He doesn’t take the water, he doesn’t move at all. “Whiskey.”

“Jesus.” Eddie doesn’t sound pissed-off or wounded like Richie anticipated, but somehow the shock in his voice is just as bad. He finds a seat at the edge of the bathtub, close enough that his legs press up against Richie’s ribs and one hand lands between his shoulders. “How much?”

“Not a lot, I don’t know. That much?” He pinches his fingers out in front of him about the length of the neck of the bottle He finally takes the glass of water, desperate to clean his mouth of the taste. “Dumped most of it down the sink.”

“That’s good.” He sighs, sounding relieved. “You did good.”

Richie groans into the toilet again. He wants to drown himself in the bowl.

“Rich, look at me,” Eddie demands. His voice is firm but his hands are gentle where they wrap around Richie, moving him to turn and look at Eddie face to face. “I’m proud of you, okay?”

His words release the dam behind Richie’s eyes and he’s sobbing, being pulled close so his face is buried against Eddie’s stomach, both of them awkwardly hunched together. He’d cried like this once as a child with his mother, giant alligator tears soaking through one of her dresses because of his scraped and bloodied palms after taking a tumble. She’d washed his hands for him carefully, he remembers her fingers were always so cold, and pressed a gentle kiss to each palm. 

Eddie pulls Richie away when his tears slow a bit and presses several kisses across his forehead and temples, so soft he’d almost believe he was imagining them. He pulls Richie to his feet and leads him to his toothbrush, and then to bed. 

“Sleep it off,” Eddie commands. He presses Richie into the mattress and covers him up. “We’ll talk when you wake up.”

“Stay?” He wishes he had more energy to put into sounding less pathetic, but he doesn’t.

It works though, so he guesses he can be okay with it. Eddie climbs into bed next to him and it isn’t distressing or frightening. It’s what he wants, and he’s learning to be okay with wanting it. He might be passing out, still tipsy and exhausted from crying, but he feels safe and content being held so tightly by someone. It’s easy to relax with Eddie’s hand sliding through his hair. 

——

Ted is in bed when Richie wakes up, and Eddie is not. He feels groggy, but not as horribly sick as he would have expected. 

Wandering through the house, he hears Eddie quickly wrapping up a phone call before he pops out of the kitchen. 

“Hey, feel better?” He smiles up at Richie, and while it looks genuine, his eyes are tired and red. 

“Eddie, I’m sorry.” He’ll grovel if he needs to, he’d kiss Eddie’s feet and beg if that’s what he wanted him to do. “I was-”

“Richie.” Hands wander over Richie’s forearms, resting briefly at his elbows before moving to squeeze firmly at his biceps. Eddie’s hands are stronger than they look in an oddly reassuring way. “Four years ago you would have ended today getting your stomach pumped. You dumped a whole bottle down the drain instead, that’s not something to apologize for.”

“But I-“

Eddie’s expression is unmistakably ‘if that’s another apology I’ll fight you’, so Richie cuts himself off. 

“It was you.” His expression shifts, perplexed, until Richie can’t look at him anymore and finds an interesting spot on the wall behind him. “I was thinking about you, and I dumped it.”

Twin grips on his biceps disappear and Eddie’s hands move to Richie’s neck instead. They reel him in, strong, to a kiss too rough and short for Richie to properly return. 

“You did good,” he repeats. If he says it enough, maybe Richie will start to believe it, he does deliver it with a certain conviction.

He kisses Richie again, just once, and looks up at him like he matters. Like it’s a good thing he’s standing there and sober and with Eddie. 

He’s so. Pretty. Fuck it. He’s allowed to think it. Eddie is pretty, with his big round eyes and his age lines and his greying hair. 

“I made you cry.” His thumb slides over the puffy skin under one of Eddie’s bloodshot eyes like the touch will wipe it all away.

“No, Stan made me cry.” So that’s who he’d been on the phone with. It makes sense now that Richie thinks about it, that Stan would be the ear Eddie would go to with Richie Problems. It’s the least horrible option he can think of knowing about his fuck ups. 

“Want me to kick his ass?” Richie asks. “I’ll kick his ass.”

The laugh that bursts from Eddie’s chest is real and solid, grin reaching his sparkling eyes.

“We’ll see. Maybe.”

Eddie leans close, head resting against Richie’s chest and holding there tight. Richie moves into the embrace, accepts it happily and rests his own cheek on top of Eddie’s soft hair. 

“I’m a mess,” he says on his next exhale. 

“Yeah.” Eddie’s shoulders jump once with a laugh. “You know you can talk to me though, right?”

“I know.”

Though he can’t really, can he? He can’t explain to someone he’s been married to for years that he’s finding it hard to think about sleeping with him. Or that he’s a little bit stressed out because he’s in a magical fucking alternate reality and his real life is a mess where they don’t even speak to each other. 

“Or you can always call your sponsor,” he adds. “I know it can be hard to talk to me about some of it.”

Richie doesn’t even know who his sponsor is, but he would agree to anything if it would set Eddie’s mind at ease. “I’ll think about it.”

“’Kay.” Eddie presses both his palms firmly into Richie’s back, keeping him grounded. “I love you.”

One trembling wavy breath is all Richie has in him. He refuses to cry again, though. He scrubs one hand over his face roughly, sniffles and shakes his head and sighs. Then he grabs Eddie by his shoulders and holds him back at arms length. 

“I’ve had enough emotional vulnerability for one day!” He announces. “How about you?”

“God, yes.” Eddie’s laugh is loud and relieved. “Wanna watch a shitty movie and plan a road trip?”

Eddie picks something at random to play that turns out to be so bad that he keeps interrupting himself to laugh at the dialogue in disbelief. Every time he does, he looks at Richie like it’s something for both of them, some shared joke, a side glance of ‘you fuckin’ believe this?’ that Richie covets. He’s longed to have this closeness with Eddie. He did once, he thinks. He has distant memories of staying up late at sleepovers, just the two of them hidden away from all of their friends, sitting inches from the tv because the volume was so low. Watching Mystery Science Theaters and, aware that any giggling would wake whichever adult was in the house, making gleeful eye contact with each other at the particularly funny parts. Fingers pressed over lips. Only in the light of the next day could they quote those parts and laugh as hard as they wanted to. He didn’t have that with anyone else, not even Stan who loved science fiction just as much as Richie did. It was always just Eddie. 

xxxx

Something after that switches in Richie’s mind. The tension he’s been carrying around with him breaks and he feels… free. He wakes up in the morning wrapped around Eddie like a second blanket and doesn’t rip himself away to go hide in the bathroom and feel guilty about it. He stays still and warm and gets to watch as Eddie gradually comes awake next to him, all bed head and scruffy pillowcase creased face. 

Eddie squints and grumbles and squirms in an attempt to escape from underneath Richie. When he fails, he kicks his one free leg until the blanket covering them both is ripped away. 

“Like sleeping with a fucking furnace,” he gripes. 

“You can just say I’m hot,” Richie teases back. “No need to be coy.”

“Mm.” Eddie looks halfway back to sleep. “Wouldn’t boost your ego.”

Newfound comfort or not, it’s still a funny little thrill to lean in and press a kiss to Eddie’s dimpled cheek. He rolls away to shower and dress, looking back only long enough to see Eddie curl up against the sudden cold, reaching blindly for the cover he’d just kicked away. Cute.

Eddie said he loves him. 

It’s stupid to get caught up on when it’s pretty obvious not only in the way Eddie talks to him, but in his actions as well. They’re married, a partnership, he highly doubts that the ring on his finger came with a “best bros forever” proposal. 

But hearing the words actually being spoken out loud was different. 

Now that he’s separated from the emotions of the moment, his mind is on fire with it. All he can think on an endless loop is “Eddie loves me! Eddie loves _me_. Me? _Eddie_??” He wants to hear it again and again. 

Unfortunately there’s no time to run out and trap Eddie and tell him to say he loves him again (which would be weird now that he’s put the thought into words anyway). He has a morning of recording followed by an afternoon of pre-road trip shopping. 

They load up on car snacks and travel bags, Richie drapes himself over the shopping cart and tries to convince Eddie to buy eight different flavors of Pringles until Eddie sharply reminds him that neither of them even like Pringles and to stop annoying him. 

A pricey and goofy-looking secure dog bed car seat goes into the cart as well. It’s actually Richie’s idea to buy, but it sets a soft expression on Eddie’s face. 

“And if you get tired, you can use it too while I drive,” Richie suggests. “A good two for one!”

“Hilarious.” Eddie’s tone is dry, too busy reading the fine details on the box to bother sounding properly annoyed. “You’re really killing it. Keep going and your seat’ll be in the trunk.”

It was fun, as kids, to be able to rile Eddie up with barely an effort, have him screaming and telling him to shut the fuck up. Something about Eddie being unfazed is almost just as good, though. He never thought he’d see the day he would love the feeling of his jokes falling flat. 

“So? Are all of Ted’s royal standards met?”

“Yeah, it looks good.” Eddie keeps walking, leading them away from all pet goods. “Now if we can keep him from shitting on it is the real test.”

Richie buys new swim trunks (Eddie declares that his current pair are an offense to his senses). He also tosses a pair of tiny blindingly bright blue running shorts in while Eddie’s talking just to laugh when he hastily rips them out and puts them back on the rack. 

“Those were for Bill!” Richie skates forward on the cart. He’d stand on the back and ride it down the aisle like he used to as a kid if the entire thing wouldn’t topple and wreck his body. “You’re so rude.”

“You know Bill doesn’t have the legs for them, you could have at least said Mike.” Richie has to concede to a good point. “Go check out, I’m gonna run to the bathroom.”

“I knew it.” Richie presses a hand to his chest, all scandalized offense. “You’re only with me for the money.”

Eddie tiptoes, handful of Richie’s shirt in his fist, to kiss him briefly. He claps a hand on Richie’s stubbled cheek. “We have a shared bank account.”

Richie wraps up with his cheeks burning and waits by the car for Eddie to find him, watching him take the last few yards to the car at a light jog. He has a drawstring bag bumping off of his bare knees that he hadn’t had before. 

“What the hell is that?” Richie gapes. The bag is highlighter yellow and declares _CHEER DIVA_ in two hideously contrasting fonts. 

“It was either this or Sonic the Hedgehog,” Eddie grumbles defensively. “I made the smart choice.”

“Yeah, but why?”

“I need a bag for the trip, plus I forgot my trail mix.” He lifts and flops the end of the bag around as if to show that the weight at the bottom is _obviously_ a bag of nuts and raisins and other healthy things. Eddie doesn’t even buy the mix that has M&Ms in it. 

“Alright.” Richie pops into the driver’s seat. “Come on, diva.”

xxxx

They spend the day packing, loading all their bags and necessities next to the front door so when it comes time to go, the mad scramble will at least be minimized. Ted bounces between the two of them as they worked anxiously, in a huff because of the shuffling back and forth going on until it becomes too much and he collapses exhausted in his bed. 

“Richie!” Eddie’s voice is muffled, far down the hall behind their bedroom door. He’d disappeared a while ago, something about laundry and honestly who knows. “Can you help me reach this?”

He hustles down the hallway, ready to go with a million jabs at Eddie for struggling to reach whatever it is he’s after. Maybe he’ll offer to lift him on his shoulders just to see if he’ll stubbornly do it in the name of being difficult. 

“Yeah?” He wrenches the door open. “Wha-hhh-“

His words die on his tongue, shriveled up and turned into ash, escaping on a wheeze. 

Eddie is standing next to the dresser in the room, leaning just slightly against it, wearing a tshirt and the bright blue shorts from yesterday. He looks thoroughly satisfied at Richie’s incoherence, grinning over at him. 

He tries to swallow but his mouth has never been so dry in his life. 

“Those were for Bill.” His voice is a meager rasp and the joke doesn’t diffuse anything. “When?”

His legs are frozen solid, useless stumps when Eddie approaches him. 

“You know I wouldn’t use a Walmart bathroom, come on.” 

The way Eddie looks up at him holds a stunning confidence that is heart stopping. Richie read once that it’s physically impossible to swallow your own tongue, but he’s really giving it the old college try. 

“You can’t wear these shorts in public.” One of Eddie’s palms meets Richie’s stomach, leaving fire in its trail to cup around his hip. “I can see your entire dick.”

Eddie’s other hand raises until it finds a resting spot on Richie’s shoulder so they’re standing almost pressed front to front. 

“I didn’t get them for the public.” His voice suggests this should have been obvious. “I got them because of your weird athletic wear fetish.”

Well that’s…. fucking mortifying. 

“W- wh-“ He stutters because what this moment needed was to be even more embarrassing. “I don’t-“

The hand on Richie’s hip moves to cup the front of the soft shorts he’s wearing. “You sure?”

Richie’s hands feel like they’ve been replaced with two cement blocks, hanging heavily at the ends of his arms, useless, unable to move even to touch Eddie back if he wanted to. He just stands there like a nervous virgin at prom or something (he didn’t go to prom, he got high and ate like three boxes of frozen waffles with Stan) too scared to put his hands on his date’s waist. Only his date is Eddie and Eddie’s hand is on his dick which is responding eagerly to the attention. 

“Richie?” 

He feels like his grasp on his sanity has come unhinged and he doesn’t care. Couldn’t be further away from caring. He kisses Eddie. Harder than he’s allowed himself in the past couple weeks, deeper, dirtier. He can feel Eddie’s lips pull back in a satisfied smile for just a flash and then he’s kissing back. The weight of his hands returns to normal and his legs unfreeze and his body allows him to take the half step it needs to be right in Eddie’s space. His arms move easily to lead his hands to the back of Eddie’s head and the small of his back. Not yet quite brave enough to venture any lower. Ass grabbing is a second dance at prom sort of thing. Probably? Why does he keep thinking about prom, Jesus.

Both of Eddie’s hands tickle across Richie’s rib cage when he winds his arms around him, pulling even closer. He can _feel_ Eddie through their shorts and on reflex the hand at Eddie’s back jerks, bumping their hips together. 

They’re both breathless when Eddie pulls away.

“We’re going to be on the road for the next four nights and I won’t fuck you in a hotel room.” The bluntness of his voice makes Richie laugh involuntarily and has Eddie smiling back while nudging him toward the bed. 

It’s… different to what Richie is used to. He’s sober and knows the other guy’s name, for one thing, but it’s not this dreadfully serious affair either. Eddie laughs and teases and compliments Richie like it’s all no big deal. 

There’s a moment once Eddie is shirtless where Richie falls to a stop. He can feel it being weird and out of place, but he can’t pull himself out of it. He looks at Eddie laying across the bed with an open confidence and comfort that suits him, he deserves it. There’s scar tissue across his chest all faded and pink that he’s unbothered with having exposed, nor should he be because he’s fuckin _stacked_ like… 10/10 there is no question he married down when he chose Richie holy _shit_. He’s hard, the shorts and he both do nothing to hide that. He just looks back at Richie, wide dark eyes devouring him right back and smiling satisfied. 

“Like ’em?” He asks. One thumb flicks the waistband of the shorts so they snap sharp against the skin of his hip. 

“Yeah, I’m just-“ He gets stuck again. Unsure how to articulate how caught up he is in his thoughts of how long he’s wanted this and of how even longer he refused to allow himself to even consider it. Like a starving man suddenly sat down in front of a king’s feast, he doesn’t know where to start. “If I knew I’d have this… back then…”

It’s overwhelming, but not scary in the way he’s built it up in his mind. He doesn’t feel… dirty, or ashamed, or anything like that. There’s no room in his brain for it, just Eddie laying on his side, propped on one elbow and chatting like it’s any other normal moment. It’s stupid to think now that it’s happening, but he kind of forgot sex is a two person thing. He’s spent all this time and energy on holding himself away from it that he forgot to consider that Eddie wants it, too. 

“Ugh, you sap.” Eddie bops one socked foot against Richie’s hip. He shifts and shoves, taking Richie with him until he’s straddling his hips. “There’s time for that later.”

He teases but the kiss he presses to Richie’s lips is gentle and his eyes shine and crinkle with his smile, pleased. Then he grinds down once and that’ll do it, Richie’s brain unplugs and his hands fly to grip tight at Eddie’s hips, dragging them together again immediately. Eddie moves willingly, thighs spread so wide he must feel the stretch to fit around Richie’s hips. 

“Shit.” Richie falters, not sure where to put his hands. One falls to Eddie’s thigh where he can feel his muscles shifting as he moves, his thumb slides under the leg of the shorts which are hiked so high the tan line at his thighs is visible. He presses into the warm skin there, velvet soft, finds the beginning of coarser hairs than those on his thighs. The other rises to trace the defined line above Eddie’s hipbone that he’s been unable to peel his eyes away from for even a moment. Eddie’s hands rest at Richie’s forearms, not even really gripping but keeping his hands where they are. 

“Wait, wait, okay.” Eddie disengages, lifts away and leaves Richie feeling like he’s just been shaken wildly like a ragdoll and laid to rest. “These have to go.”

He rips the running shorts off of his hips and leaves them dangling sadly from one leg. Richie is so caught up on _he wasn’t wearing anything underneath_ and _that’s Eddie’s dick (!!!!!!)_ he doesn’t think for even a moment that Eddie’s going to rip his shorts off too until he does. 

No time to be shy about it, Eddie’s back to straddling him, hand around both of their erections at once. He says something at the same time he swipes his thumb, tracing the head of Richie’s cock absentmindedly, but the words reach his ears like static. 

“Huh?” How is he supposed to comprehend the English language when his dick is in Eddie’s hand. 

“I said-“ he lets them both go to lean forward, digging around under a fold in the blanket. Richie’s hands move on instinct, holding Eddie’s waist to keep him from toppling over. “I’m ready, I took care of the prep.”

He sits straight and Richie can see that what he’d been stretching to reach is the condom he’s biting open now. 

“Wha- you said you were doing laundry!”

Eddie smiles and spits the corner of the wrapper out of his mouth. If he keeps up like that, Richie’s brain is going to leak out of his ears and nose. “I did both.” He tosses the rest of the wrapper aside carelessly. 

“That might be hard for you to understand.” How is he just like, talking and rolling a condom onto Richie at the same time. “With your time management skills.”

“Ha.” Richie makes an honorable attempt at a laugh, but it comes out weak. He can at least recognize that the dig at him was a good one. 

“Fuck,” Eddie says on a sigh as he sinks onto Richie, slow but steady, one luxurious movement. He stops once he bottoms out, thighs twitching with the effort to hold himself, fingers twitching against Richie’s chest where he’s balanced. “Yeah.”

The grasp Richie found at his waist hasn’t moved, he consciously attempts to loosen his fingers away from the wrong side of bruising, but it’s difficult. How is he supposed to relax any singular part of his body when he’s _inside Eddie_? 

Eddie moves, shallow at first, like he’s still adjusting. Richie’s eyes are caught on his arms, the way they flex from holding himself up, starkly defined curves leading to strong shoulders. He’s masculine, which seems very _‘no shit Sherlock’_ to spend any time thinking about, but it’s not something Richie has allowed himself to admire in any of his other partners. He’s strong and firm and sharp and hairy and it’s mouth watering. Intoxicating. 

“It’s been too long.” 

“Sorry to have-“ His breath catches when Eddie shifts, arches, finds a rhythm. His hips jerk into the heat of him before he can stop himself, startling a soft _‘uh!’_ from Eddie. “-deprived you.”

Richie chokes when Eddie tweaks his nipple, an admonishment, but it sends electric shocks all the way out to his fingertips. His hands drop from Eddie’s waist to his hips, thankful for the first time in his life for his strangely long appendages that allow his fingers to press into the soft swell of his ass at the same time. 

His new grip allows him to help Eddie, too, who groans at the relief of not needing to do all of the work of holding himself up. Lets Richie plant his heels and leverage to meet him at every thrust, which has Eddie quaking and clenching around him. 

“This is, _ah, fuck_.” Eddie has to shift where his hands are pressing Richie’s shoulders into the mattress, slipping where sweat is beginning to build between them. “Killing my back.”

Richie barks a laugh. He anticipated something at least a little bit sexy to leave Eddie’s mouth, not _that_. 

“Old,” he jabs. 

“You’re two months older than me!” His sharp tone is undermined slightly by the breathiness of his voice. “Dickhead. I’m doing all the work.”

“Okay, okay.” 

He helps Eddie lift away and watches him topple heavily onto the mattress. He stretches right away, back arching and twisting with a satisfying pop, already reaching out to drag Richie close. He pulls him into a kiss, smiling and wrapping his legs tight around Richie’s hips, heels bumping at his back urging him back into action.

“Mm,” Eddie hums his encouragement against Richie’s lips, his hips pressing back into Eddie in one easy slide. The change in angle gets him deeper than before and he knows they both feel it. Feel him twitching inside before he’s even moving. “God, that’s good.”

“Eddie.” His voice wavers, nothing about him feels steady. He fists the sheets on either side of Eddie’s head and tries not to fall apart at the seams. 

“Yeah,” Eddie echoes. His hands come up to wrap around Richie’s shoulders and tangle in his hair; his hips lift to drag Richie deeper, harder. He says Richie’s name and bites the underside of his jaw, sending heat melting down his spine. 

With Eddie gasping against his neck and biting at his jaw, Richie is left with his nose buried in his hair. He smells so _Eddie_ ; clean, the faint spice of a shampoo, the hint of sweat that has Richie’s eyes rolling. 

He finally gets a hand between them, wraps a fist around Eddie’s erection and has him mewling. 

“Rich, love you.”

It makes Richie gasp, too surprised to think straight. “Say it again.”

Eddie does, speaking incoherent love confessions in his ear. He sounds so slutty and needy and it wrecks Richie like nothing else. How has no one ever told him before that sex with someone you know, someone who you actually care about, is so much better than drunk delirious hook ups with strangers? Maybe that’s not something he should need to be told explicitly, but it would have been nice to know. 

It’s just. Different. Knowing the person you’re sleeping with wants you there too. Specifically _you_ , not just any other warm body. It swells up in his chest like a comically oversized balloon, too big for his goofy body. 

“Fuck, Eddie.” Richie curls, buries his face in Eddie’s neck. 

Eddie’s babbling has faded away into nothing but noise, but the words still rattle around in Richie’s head echoing louder and louder. He feels Eddie coming before he really sees it, in the tensing of his muscles and the twitching of his cock. The way his back bows. Then he’s coming and Richie follows right after him, face still buried. 

Richie finds his way back to reality gradually, still curled around Eddie like his life depends on it. He comes around to Eddie brushing his fingers over his face, glasses gone, looking up at him with his big dark eyes. 

Only when Eddie continues to wipe his face, fingers tickling across his cheeks, does Richie realize he’s wiping away tears. 

“Been a while since one of these, huh?” Eddie is grinning, completely unbothered by having Richie’s entire frame collapsed on top of him. 

“Sorry, shit.” Richie inhales, breath shaking. How is he going to explain this away? 

Eddie shushes him. “You don’t have to apologize, it happens.”

Richie sniffles loudly. He feels like an idiot. This _has_ happened, but usually a while later, after whichever guy has been kicked out. 

“Lemme up.” 

Eddie slaps Richie’s ass lightly, and it’s just absurd enough to snap him out of his embarrassment for a moment. Long enough to pull it together and roll away from Eddie who takes the chance to stretch out his limbs and back. There’s a distant part of Richie’s brain that takes a moment to notice the look of Eddie stretched out and naked, jizz on his stomach, but he’s still too water-eyed to fully appreciate it.

He watches Eddie go with a slight wobble, can hear him puttering around in the attached bathroom, tossing the condom and splashing water. Absurdly, Richie finds himself considering the story as told on a stage. _‘So I cried after sex recently, like full blown sobbing, can you imagine?’_ How would it play to a crowd? It’s funnier than _Masturbators Anonymous_ , without question, but that’s a low bar. He thinks for one entire second about including the detail that the man he was having sex with was a good sport about it, but then he kind of can’t breathe. 

Thankfully that’s when Eddie returns as a distraction, climbing straight back into the bed. He wipes Richie’s eyes, though his tears seem to have more or less dried up, but it feels nice. 

“All good?” Eddie presses a kiss to his forehead, his cheek, the corner of his lips. 

When Richie nods, Eddie settles, lays back and drags Richie with him. His head settles on Eddie’s chest and his brain stutters over accepting it.

He waits for his misery to set in, the way it always does after sex. It takes him a long few minutes to realize _that’s_ what he’s waiting for, but once he does he subsequently realizes that he just feels… good. Content. Tired. 

“Hey grab the remote.” Eddie _whaps_ his shoulder blade with the back of his hand. “I wanna see if Jeopardy’s on.”

“Jesus.” Richie’s voice strains with the stretch he needs to pull to reach the bedside table. “You _are_ old.”

“You’re still older than me, asshole.” 

Eddie shimmies and sinks down farther into the blankets. His chest hair rasps over Richie’s cheek, and the adjustment lands his resting hand almost directly over the scar tissue on his chest. He expects both of those things to be frightening, but neither one sends him spiraling. He presses his fingers into the pale pink skin and finds it solid and unyielding, a testament to Eddie’s strength. The slightest quirk of a smile passes over Eddie’s face, his hand raises and joins Richie’s, fingers lacing over his scar. 

“Besides-“ His thumb swipes across the back of Richie’s hand, absentminded. “You’re the one always complaining when guests interrupt Alex.”

The laundry buzzes. 

“I’ll get it after the first round,” Eddie says, barely intelligible through his wide yawn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: richie doesn't have a full blown relapse but drinks alcohol with a not-great motivator behind it. 
> 
> \----
> 
> writing the final scene in this almost destroyed me, I don't even know why, I felt like a sucked dry capri sun pouch when i finished it. I felt like those people in the old anti-weed commercials that are all flat and lifeless. that's me now. please let my sacrifice have been for a worthy cause and remember me in my afterlife.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> road trip babey!!!!!!!!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yee-haw

They hit the road early in the morning because Eddie wouldn’t let it happen any other way. As if there’s some rush hour to head off on the endless empty desert roads. Ted snores in the backseat, no cares in the world, and Eddie hums along to the softly playing radio, a song Richie distantly recognizes but can’t pinpoint. As the sun rises and the sky paints vivid purples and blues that gradient into orange, red, and yellow, Richie takes a picture and sends it to the Losers group chat with a line about hitting the dusty trail attached. He watches long enough to see Mike reply ‘yee haw’ before he sets his phone down.

They arrive in Oatman earlier than expected, a feat that has Eddie looking smug about all of the imagined traffic he successfully avoided. Richie doesn’t say anything to burst his balloon, because apparently a smug Eddie is a hot Eddie. 

It’s hot and dusty, arranged like an old west movie set more than a real functioning town, and there are actual wild donkeys walking around the streets as they fill with tourists. Ted trots along with them until Eddie gets too nervous that he’ll be stepped on by a donkey and carries him in his arms. 

“Hey, Eds, check it out!” He’s got one donkey eating food pellets from a quarter machine out of his hand like it’s a gourmet dinner and another nosing bossily at his side like it might find even more hidden in his pockets.

Eddie looks over from where he’s reading a boring signpost about the town history and makes a disgusted face, mouth pulling into a grimace. “Richie!”

“They like it!” He stands still long enough to give away what’s left of his pellets and rubberbands back to Eddie’s side. He shoves his hand out toward Eddie’s face who _actually_ screeches and reels away. 

“Fucking gross!” Richie meets the eye of a scandalized looking woman and winks. “Wash your hands, oh my god.”

They grab lunch in a place that Richie is delighted to find is named The Classy Ass. There’s a large mural on the building that he gets a picture in front of and forces Eddie to do the same with Ted cradled under one arm. (He sends that to the group chat with a suggestion that Eddie has a hotel inheritance on the way.) Eddie recites some historical facts about the gold rush while they watch a cowboy shootout reenactment, and something about Eddie listing dates and mining techniques from the 1800s is more captivating than the two men pretending to shoot each other right in front of them. 

They don’t stay too long overall, not with Eddie’s rabid obsession with making good time on the road. He has firm plans to reach Albuquerque by nightfall and Richie knows better than to get in the way of those. They split up to give Ted another walk and Richie is determined to find all necessary road trip snacks for them to survive. If he finds something else while looking in the store, well…

Eddie is crouched petting the head of a baby donkey laying on the ground near where they parked when Richie finds him, arms stuffed full of snacks plus one new tank top. He stops before Eddie can see him to take a picture, just for himself this time. 

“Make a friend?” He asks loudly, announcing his approach. “Only scared of the big ones, huh?”

“I’m not scared of them.” Eddie’s all stern annoyance. “I think they’re disgusting.”

As if driving his point home, he uses a downright unnecessary amount of hand sanitizer practically up to his elbows as soon as they’re back in the car, then forces Richie to do the same. Like they’re going into surgery, not picking back up to drive through even more flat desert. 

“Got you this.” Richie tosses the tank top at Eddie’s lap so that he can dutifully sanitize to his high standards. 

He watches Eddie unfold the shirt and hold it up in front of him to read the “Nice ass! Oatman, AZ” on the front. His lips press together, but in the next second he’s cackling and crumpling the shirt into a ball in his fists to throw it back at Richie’s face. 

“Thanks.” Eddie doesn’t look at him, tongue poking out between his teeth as he carefully pulls out of their parking spot and they leave Oatman in their rearview. It’s alarmingly cute. 

They drive for hours through even more endless featureless desert, sunglasses and radio on, only stopping when Richie and Ted both start whining about needing to pee. Eddie walks the dog and Richie loudly laments the lack of trees to conceal himself behind.

“Hey Eds howsabout an old-fashioned pissing contest?” 

“I don’t have to go!” Eddie yells over at him from where he’s standing, watching Ted sprint around in excited circles.

“How is that possible!?” Richie shouts back, disbelief soaking his words. 

“Because.” Eddie’s suddenly much closer, readying to let Ted back into the backseat. “I went an hour ago at the rest stop like a normal person.”

“That’s where you went?” He’d vanished while Richie had filled the car with gas and returned with fresh bottles of water. Richie hadn’t spent any time thinking about it. “Smart.”

Eddie’s eyebrows twitch just once before he ducks back into the passenger side window while Richie zips up. “One of us has to be.” He reemerges, endless supply of hand sanitizer at the ready. “You’re driving.”

“Ooh.” He snatches the keys from Eddie with freshly cleaned hands. He could swear he’s used more sanitizer in the past two weeks than his entire life. “You gonna give me road head?”

It’s so easy to joke about that he forgets it could be taken as an actual request. Every mile between them and Palm Springs makes it easier to not think about the strange position he’s in, easier to think of this Eddie as just _Eddie_. 

“Not fucking likely.” Eddie snorts a laugh and opens the passenger door.

“You know big rig drivers see the craziest stuff,” Richie says after a few minutes back on the road. “They can see right down into car windows, they see road head all the time.”

“Is that supposed to make me change my mind?” Eddie frowns, pained and disgusted. 

“I dunno.” Richie shrugs his shoulders up to his ears and back down. “It might.”

——

Richie gets a call from Ben while driving through the middle of fuck-off nowhere, New Mexico. Eddie answers and puts his phone on speaker, but it’s Beverly’s voice that calls back through the speaker. 

“Ben’s phone was closer,” she says like it’s just that simple. “How’s driving?”

“Fine,” Eddie replies at the same time as Richie shouts “Eddie won’t give me road head!”

Bev laughs and someone else snorts in the background. 

“Who’s that?” Eddie asks. “Ben?”

“Ben’s carrying luggage upstairs, Bill and Audra just got in.” Her voice goes a bit faint, like she’s turning away from the phone. “Say hi.”

“Hi guys!” Bill sounds far off. “The donkeys were cute.”

“From a distance,” Eddie agrees. “You guys the first in?”

There’s a rustling on the mic, fingers clumsily grappling against the plastic, then Bill is louder. “Yeah, Stan and Patty are a few days from leaving, Mike’s landing tomorrow.”

“Three more days for us, I think.” Eddie has his thinking voice on, eyes probably darting back and forth where he visualizes a calendar in his mind, but Richie can’t check without facing the wrath of daring to take his eyes off the road for one second. 

“We’re going to Graceland!” Richie blurts. He stretches one hand out to grab the phone, eyes still on the road, and knocks it out of Eddie’s hand instead.

It clatters down next to Eddie’s feet, and Eddie yells a creative string of curses between yelling Richie’s name while in a very creative yoga pose folding himself in half. 

“He wants my hunk-a burnin’ love!” Richie shouts, probably entirely drowned out by Eddie’s much louder swearing. 

“No!” Eddie pops back up into his seat like a jack in the box, hair significantly ruffled and face flushed. Richie looks, the road is empty anyway. 

Bill and Beverly are both laughing now that Eddie has the phone back up and held out between them. 

“We have to call Stan!” Beverly says after a long laughing sigh. “Don’t kill each other, guys.”

“We’ll see.” Eddie grumbles. “I’m on the fence.”

“Love you guys!” Bill and Beverly both call out, voices overlapping. 

“You too, bye!” Eddie ends the call and punches Richie’s shoulder just lightly. “Dick.”

Richie hasn’t called Beverly in months, has only thought about her in ugly jealous thoughts that he hates himself for having. He loves Beverly, of course he does, just as much as he loves the rest of his friends. But she got so much out of the reunion in Derry, after everything. She got to have what Richie didn’t. She deserves it, she deserves Ben and everything he can give to her, and that only makes Richie hate the jealousy that boils inside of him even more. 

If he called her, would she forgive him for ignoring her for months? Ignoring all of them? Would she say I love you before hanging up?

xxxx

“Well mister road trip planner, what else is on the way to Albuquerque?” Richie asks. Only he says _‘alba-koi-kee’_ like Bugs Bunny. 

He’s back in the passenger seat, only a few more hours away from their hotel for the night. He’d propped his feet up on the dash as soon as he sat, but one look from Eddie had them firmly cemented back on the floor. 

“You need more than the Tozier family reunion?” Eddie asks.

“Not really, just thought you might have big Route 66 plans, you know?” Richie scrolls through his phone, he’s been reading about platypus nesting for fifteen minutes. “You’re the type.”

“The fuck does that mean?” Eddie snaps, familiar, all the _‘what, like to a woman?’_ outrage from Derry. 

“Middle-aged, white, dad-type?” Richie waves a hand toward the fleet of cars parked on the side of the road under an old fashioned looking billboard with a cowboy on it. There are indeed a variety of middle-aged, white, dad-looking guys having their picture taken. “All busting their nuts about being on some highway with a few songs written about it.”

“Dad type?” Eddie’s voice is high in his disbelief. 

“Yeah you know, dad-ish.” Richie looks him up and down. “Dad shoes, plus you’re listening to Jimmy Buffett.”

“This is your playlist, idiot!” Eddie waves his hand, shoots his fingers pointedly with his insult, slicing through the air over the steering wheel like it’ll drive his point home better. 

“You’re singing along.” Richie watches Eddie closely in his peripherals, waits for him to settle back into a sense of ease. “Only you’re not busting a nut, I thought the song said get your kicks on Route 66.”

His fists squeak over the fake leather of the steering wheel. “You’ll get your kicks when I kick you out of the car.”

Richie cackles. The noise makes Ted look up sharply, tags jingling, but he lays his head back down when he sees nothing out of the ordinary is happening. 

——

The hotel in Albuquerque is decently nice, it’s a modern pet-friendly thing rather than one of the old stylized historical types; Eddie’s choice. The person checks them in without a second glance and they drag their weary feet to their room. 

Big plans for dinner at some apparently famous local restaurant get thrown out the window and replaced with eating delivery in bed, in underwear, side by side, watching Forensic Files reruns. Eddie dragged the single chair to the window to give Ted a perch to look out of the window from because he thinks of things like that. They make a point of guessing who committed the crime at the center of each episode and what piece of evidence will be their undoing.

“It was the grandfather,” Eddie asserts for the dozenth time. “They’ve shown his picture like six times.”

“Eddie it was a quadruple murder, it wasn’t some old guy.”

Eddie quirks his eyebrows in a clear _‘we’ll see’_ expression. Just because he correctly guessed that the guy in the episode previous would be found because of a tomato he suddenly has an ego about it. 

“I saw one once where they found the killer because of glitter,” Richie says. “Did you know glitter comes in all these different shapes and the process of making it is weirdly secretive?”

“Why would I know that?” Eddie asks with his cheeks stuffed full of food. He’s sitting with his knees up in front of him, using his legs to steady the mostly empty take out container. 

“I dunno.” Richie chucks his own food container in the trash. “You know stuff.”

They make out a little bit, lazy, nothing heated, until Eddie rips away with a triumphant yell at the reveal that the grandfather of the episode had hired a hitman to kill the four people he hated. 

“That doesn’t count!” Richie yells back. “He didn’t do it himself!”

“He’s in prison for it, it counts.” Eddie’s so pleased, it would be annoying if it wasn’t so cute. 

Richie feels ancient when they roll over to sleep and the hotel-provided alarm clock blinks back at him a bright red glowing 9:30, but he also gets to big spoon Eddie at the same time. If that’s what being ancient feels like, he thinks he can be okay with it. 

xxxx

The exit toward Roswell is about an hour outside of Albuquerque and Richie feels an unexpected dread with each mile marker they pass on their way east. Eddie doesn’t apparently notice, he’s drinking the mediocre coffee he smuggled out of their hotel lobby and hissing curses at anyone else who dares to share a road with him before sunrise. 

Somehow, Richie dozes, but it’s fitful. He’s too big to slouch properly in a car to be comfortable, so the window vibrates against his skull and rattles his brain around inside. 

“Hey Rich.” A gentle touch at his knee startles him awake and he grunts in question. “Fuck Roswell?”

Richie’s brain is all sleep-clogged and slow. Too slow to absorb the words. “What?”

“Let’s just not go.” Eddie has both hands on the wheel, but his eyes dart back to Richie once, then again, eyebrows furrowed low. “Fuck aliens.”

“Yeah.” Richie’s grin is wickedly pleased, both by the statement itself and by Eddie’s unrestrained anger. They’ve both had more than enough aliens to last anyone a lifetime. “ _Fuck_ Roswell.”

Not ten minutes later they’re blasting past the exit and Eddie yells again, “fuck Roswell!” over the music they’d put on once the sun rose. The exit sign vanishes behind them and soon after, the jagged line of the Rockies follows along with it, Richie feels weightless.

He looks so gleeful, finding joy in this tiny rebellion just like he had as a kid knowing he was getting away with something; staying up too late, sharing a popsicle with Richie, splashing in the quarry with his friends. Breaking his own plan like breaking the rules and shouting at the steering wheel lending a light to his eyes. 

“4 pm.” Eddie jabs a finger pointedly in Richie’s direction. “Fucking time me, we’ll make it before dinner.”

“Isn’t the point of a road trip to stop and see the sights?” Richie asks. 

“No.” Eddie’s voice turns up at the end, almost a question. “The point is to win and be the best at road trips.”

Richie gapes, unable to say anything more. He supposes it shouldn’t be surprising that Eddie is competitive about driving, somehow, even though the only person he’s competing against is himself. He was like that as a kid too, a bit, not often aggressive about it but if Richie yelled out a challenge (‘first one to the hammock gets ten extra minutes!’) he would take off like a demon. He always beat Richie in races even if his legs were shorter, and he never needed his inhaler in those moments, somehow. 

It makes sense that wouldn’t just leave him in adulthood. When he’s not scared stiff by the very real threat of death, Eddie is still something else. He’d gone shot for shot with Richie at dinner and _he_ was the one who suggested they arm wrestle. Richie was just thankful that he was wearing long sleeves, especially now that he’s more intimately familiar with the series of curves of his biceps and shoulders. Not ideal to ruin dinner with your friends after twenty-some years by popping an extremely obvious and embarrassing boner right in front of them.

His arms are out now, he’s wearing the ‘nice ass’ tank top from yesterday and his biceps look delicious in the sunlight. His eyes are bright, shaded by the visor flipped down in front of him, and his posture is impeccable. Even here, in the right lane moving at a steady rate, cruise control at a cool 72, he doesn’t relax. He doesn’t take either hand off the wheel or slouch back against the seat or anything. His face is neutral, calm, stubbled along his chin because he couldn’t find his razor this morning in his overpacked bags.

It feels suddenly and alarmingly revealing, how attractive he finds Eddie here. He feels stripped down to his bones, everything spelled out with his intestines on the ground.

It’s always been Eddie.

Yes, there was the innocent crush. The incessant need to have Eddie’s attention on him at all times and if it wasn’t for even a moment, do something loud to get it back. Quick, Eddie’s looking at his homework, yell something about his mom so he looks at you instead.

It was the same at the reunion, at The Jade, as soon as he walked in the door and thought _’oh, yeah, I remember this.’_

But it had never really left him, either, had it?

Every man he’s ever dared to look at for longer than a second has had something he sees here in the car: dark brown eyes, dimples, short, clean-cut. He’s been drawn to men with spitfire attitudes who call him out on his shit, who love running and baseball even though Richie could not give less of a shit about either of those. He thought he just got along with those types maybe, even his _manager_ is a short little bossy asshole, but no. He’s spent two and a half decades chasing after cheap store-brand versions of Eddie without knowing it, and none of them ever lived up to the real thing. 

School Boy Heart plays on the radio and ain’t that just a kick in the head.

 _’Ah, fuck,’_ Richie thinks with a sudden clarity he’s never had before. _’I L-Word Eddie.’_

It feels less scary to think than he would have thought. 

Eddie’s eyes dart in a glance followed by a double-take.

“What are you looking at?” He smiles, crooked, all big cow eyes and eyelashes catching the light when he looks back at the road. 

“You.” He reaches out and pinches Eddie’s cheek just the same as he always had as a kid. Only now Eddie has wrinkles and beard hair. “You’re just so cute!”

“Fuck off! I’m driving!” Eddie flaps his hand to slap Richie away, the car doesn’t veer off course by even an inch. 

He settles after his slaps and reaches out, grabs hold tight of Richie’s hand on top of the middle console and rests there. Richie remembers his parents holding hands like this in the car sometimes, catching sight of their knuckles pressed together from the backseat when reading made him too nauseous and he had to stop. He always thought that was such a true showcase of love, the type of deep caring parents have for each other that matters more than any of the arguments or troubles. He wonders if they felt as good then as he does now. 

——

They find a rest stop in Texas where they all, including Ted, stretch their legs and use a bathroom. Richie buys a bag of chips knowing that Eddie will give him significant looks about it but still reach over to steal half of them. 

Everything in the little gas station store comes in a Texas-shaped variety. It’s fuckin weird. He grabs a keychain, but puts it back when he realizes it’s a bottle opener too and buys a spatula shaped like Texas instead. 

They trade off so Richie can drive for a bit and Eddie curls up small against the door to nap. 

Richie does not have the same insane need to reach Oklahoma City by any certain hour and while he’s not exactly dragging along the road, he doesn’t see a problem with stopping when he sees signs for something called Cadillac Ranch. Eddie snuffles awake when they pull to a stop on the side of the road. 

“Whuzzat?” He mumbles, unusually bleary-eyed. Most mornings he comes awake instantly alert and ready to start the day.

“Art, Eds.” Richie points out the window at the distant installation. “I guess.”

Eddie lifts his sunglasses up to his forehead and squints out at the completely flat desert horizon, interrupted only briefly by a crooked buck-tooth shock of a bunch of cars sticking straight out of the ground. “That’s art?”

“S’what the sign said.” Richie shrugs and starts bumping into his shoulder with the back of his hand. “Come on, Oklahomie isn’t going anywhere.”

He earns a disdainful side glance at the use of ‘Oklahomie’, but Eddie is mostly gazing out the window. “Yeah, okay.”

Cadillac Ranch is pretty cool, something about showing the evolution of tailfin shapes over the years through the car models. Exactly the kind of thing for Route 66 dads to bust a nut all over. The cars are all painted differently which is most interesting, layers and layers of spray paints and expressions. One is bright orange with a wild-eyed creature painted on the roof, another is simply covered in tags, names Richie can barely make out. 

Ted’s feet keep them from staying very long, not that there’s much else to stay for. (Eddie gave a vehement no when Richie pointed to a billboard that advertised a _‘free 72oz steak if you can eat the whole thing!’_ ) His poor little toes will burn in the sand and Eddie will carry him for a while, but not forever. 

They send one picture to Ben, voted as the most likely to age into a Route 66 dad, who does seem to actually bust a little bit of a nut over the cars. 

“Onward to Oklahomie!” Richie scoops Ted up against his chest and they hustle back to the lovely air conditioned car. 

——

They change drivers again after getting lunch at some normal restaurant that doesn’t challenge you to eat insane quantities of steak. Eddie surprises him with his interest in buying some sloppy spiced barbecued out in the sun meat, but in a good way. It’s nice to see him so far outside of the comfort zone he had himself firmly boxed inside of in Derry. They eat sitting at an old picnic bench while Ted preens under all the loving attention he gets from strangers wanting to pet him. 

One little girl in particular really has his tail wagging like crazy when she runs over, visibly restraining herself from leaping at him for just long enough to ask permission to pet him. She collapses to the ground as soon as permission is given and Ted follows, rolling over to receive endless belly scratches, tongue lolling out of his head. Eddie watches with a kind of quiet pride and the look on his face follows Richie back into the car and onto the road. 

The scenery gradually changes from dry brown grass and dusty desert earth into endless flat green fields and rich farmland. There are trees! He feels like that guy in the book, the one where he gets stranded on Mars and how he must have felt seeing green again for the first time. Did he get home? He can’t remember.

Anyway, it’s very peaceful.

Up until they drive past the most exciting billboard Richie has ever seen. 

“Eddie, oh my god!” Richie sits up dead straight from his slouched position where he was texting the losers important information (‘still no road head will report back later, over and out.’). The billboard with a giant red cowboy boot was just eye-catching enough to draw his gaze. 

_‘12 miles! Cavenders City! Genuine boots n’ hats!’_

“Christ, Richie! What?” Eddie has one hand to his chest, eyebrows pressing together.

“We have to go.” He points out the window, but the billboard is long past. He puts on the best cowboy voice he can muster. “I’m gonna get me a gen-you-wine stepson cowboy hat.”

Eddie’s eyes go flat. “You made me think I was gonna hit an animal. A _hat_?”

“For both of us! The sight of you in a cowboy hat?” He drops back against the door, doing the best impression of a maiden fainting that he can manage in a space that really doesn’t accommodate his height very well. “Oh _lawd_ have mercy I do decla-yuh.”

Eddie rolls his eyes but Richie can see the twitch of muscle in his jaw that gives away the clenching teeth biting back a smile. 

“Let this go a little longer too-“ he scrapes his thumb over the scratchy hair on Eddie’s chin. The sound it makes coils up tight in his gut. “I’ll have to fight the babes away from you with a stick.”

He scoffs and shakes his head. 

“You’re demented.”

“That may be true,” Richie says. “But I’m also right.”

Discussion shifts as they drive and drive. Ted gets lonely and demands a seat in Richie’s lap where he stands and mashes his face against the window even though he has a perfectly fine window next to the expensive car bed they bought for him. Part of Richie suspects Ted just wants to stand on his balls, because he repeatedly has to move his feet away from crushing territory. 

They pass another red boot billboard. 

“Eddie, I want a stepson cowboy hat more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life.”

“You said that last month about curry,” Eddie says. “And you know it’s not stepson, stop it.”

“Is it pissing you off?” Richie has to bite his cheeks to stop from laughing. 

He can see Eddie debating with himself what answer will be worse to give. His eyes dodge back and forth and his jaw muscle twitches again. 

“No.” Eddie breathes a heavy sigh. “Yes.”

Richie whoops when Eddie actually pulls off of the exit. The store is so close they can see the giant boot high above the store like a weird cowboy beacon. 

Inside is a wide, flat warehouse with some sparse displays of boots stacked on boxes and a bunch of overstuffed clothes hanging racks. Mannequin heads are scattered across the store, all wearing different styles of cowboy hat, and half of the walls are covered in even more hats on display. It’s unexpectedly overwhelming. Richie fully expected to run in, buy the first stupid hats he laid eyes on, and run back out yelling _yee-haw_.

The man working inside is like what Richie would have invented if he needed to think up a fake Texan, his approach all southern hospitality. Tickled pink to see Richie with a tiny dog propped up in one arm. He’s a little taller than Eddie, portly, with cowboy boots and a cowboy hat. Richie trusts him instantly, his name tag says Travis and he’s wearing a bolo tie. He’s also so friendly that it _does_ make Richie feel a little bad that he’s being such a nuisance while they shop, but not bad enough to stop. It’s too worth it to see the heated blush on Eddie’s face when Richie loudly yells _‘HOO-WHEE’_ when the very first hat touches his head and the few other eyes in the store all turn their way. 

Eddie trades his hat out for a black one with a wide brim. 

“I look like a kid playing dress up.” His fingers lift the brim of the hat and drop it back down.

The salesman smiles and nods along when Richie says, “ _Naw_ , you look like a bonafide cowpoke!” 

He looks to Travis for confirmation.

“You do!” He has a deep, hearty laugh that is warm and comforting. “Now what about you, Stretch?”

“What do ya recommend?” Richie asks. 

Travis hums and haws for a moment before he points up at Richie with a snap. “I have just the thing, wait here.” He turns and disappears with the snap of boots against the floor. 

“See, even he can’t deny that you’re a real patoot.” Richie shakes a thumb in the direction the salesman had gone searching for Richie’s hat. “And you’re in the Bible belt.”

Eddie rolls his eyes and adjusts the hat on his head again, reaching up inside to tug at his hair. 

‘Just the thing’ turns out to be a giant hat that curls up and has a band around the top of it that is accessorized with tiny animal skulls. It sends Eddie sailing into giggles the second it’s on his head.

“It’s a little-” Richie balks at completing his thought. The hat looks fucking stupid but he doesn’t want to offend Travis after he specifically picked it. “Flashy.”

Eddie snorts again from where he’s buried himself into a display of fancy jackets to calm down, pretending to be very absorbed.

They do not end up buying the hat with the tiny skulls attached to it and instead leave with Eddie’s black hat and a similar plain brown hat on Richie’s head. He keeps on the hat to go to the nearby convenience store, mostly to load up on water and prove to Eddie that he’s not a coward who wants to throw the hat into the car first.

Eddie’s waiting by the car when Richie gets out of the store and, bought as a stupid joke or not, he looks pretty fucking good standing there all bronze-armed and stubble-chinned with the shadow of his hat down over his eyes. 

“Well, howdy _pardner_ ,” Richie drawls. He hobbles the last few feet all bow-legged wide steps with his hands at his hips like he’s got two guns holstered. One wrist has a plastic shopping bag dangling from it. 

Shoulders quaking with quiet laughter, Eddie nods a hello. He knocks his hat with a couple of knuckles just like he had in the store so it bounces, but all of the embarrassment of feeling like a _kid_ is gone now. “Howdy,” he drawls right back. 

“What’s a handsome feller like you doin’ ‘round these parts?” Richie leans his elbow on the car, ready to make all kinds of eyes at Eddie, but the metal _burns_ from the sun and he jumps away with a shock. 

“Well-“ _Eddie_ makes the eyes at him and he’s leaning on the door with his hip, smart. “I’m running away with the man I love.”

He keeps slipping in and out of his accent, but he did say he loves Richie again so maybe really that’s just fine. 

Ted stands between them, drinking water from the mini plastic bowl they’d packed with them. 

“Run away with me instead!” Richie grasps one of Eddie’s hands between both of his. “We’ll be the new gay cowboys. You’ll be Jake Gyllenhaal obviously, you’re the pretty one.”

Eddie squints. “You know that movie’s a tragedy, right?”

“With the gay cowboys?” Richie drops the accent and pulls out of Eddie’s space. 

“They’re bisexual shepherds.”

“... _huh_.” Richie has to reach up and shift his hat, it’s making his forehead sweat. “Damn.”

Eddie’s left cheek dimples deeper than the right when he smiles. In the bright bright Texas sun the scar on his cheek shines despite being mostly faded. At just the right angle the tiny line of silver appears. 

“Well Eds,” Richie leaps back into the cowboy voice headfirst. “You can broke my back any day.”

His head tosses back so far to cackle at the sky, Eddie almost loses his hat. He has to reach up to hold it on with one hand. He sighs after a minute, struggling to contain his lingering giggles. 

Richie cannot decide if this is better than when his jokes fall flat with Eddie or not. 

“Alright cowboy.” Eddie looks at him and it’s just as addictive as it’s always been. “I’ll take off with you, hop in.”

Richie scrambles around to the passenger seat, stumbling over every gangly inch of his stupid legs. Bad enough Eddie makes him feel like a teenager again, here he is tripping over himself like he’s 15 again, too.

“Hang on, I have to show everyone.” Eddie says once they’re both seated and Ted is settled in. He leans back against the side of his door with his phone pulled way up close to his face pointing at Richie.

If he’s getting his picture taken looking like a fool, he decides, Eddie is too. He rips out his phone and takes a picture of Eddie taking a picture of him. They both race to be the first to send theirs to the group.

Richie attaches the caption _’cowboy cutie pie’_ and Eddie groans when his gets through first. They tussle and chuckle when Eddie’s loads a second later captioned _’an idiot’_.

It takes no time at all for multiple alerts that the other Losers are typing to appear, and Ben lands the quickest with _’bad’_ , immediately followed by _’I hate it’_. It launches them both into giggles, Eddie curling over in his seat to dig his palms into his eyes. 

Richie takes another picture of him like that and sends it. Tells Ben he made Eddie cry. 

_‘he looks stunningly handsome!’_ Beverly texts, followed by lines and lines of multi-colored hearts. 

_‘won’t the hat get in the way of the road head?’_ Bill asks. Even via text, Richie can see the look he used to get on his face as a kid when he let loose a dirty joke of his own. It wasn’t often, didn’t need to be with Richie around, but when he did he could get them all groaning and cackling and gagging into the air. 

“We gotta go,” Eddie announces very suddenly. “We’re never gonna make it by 4.”

He’s got to be kidding. All their stops and valuable sight-seeing and Eddie still hasn’t learned to stop and smell the roses. Richie’s _just_ about to say something about it, some annoying comment about being in such a rush, but Eddie’s leaning over the middle console before he can open his mouth. Even with his head turned, their stupid idiotic cowboy hats bump into each other and push crooked when Eddie kisses him. A part of Richie’s mind still screeches _’on the lips???’_. The cognitive dissonance that the guy kissing him very gently inside this car is the same guy who used to try drowning him in the filthy quarry water and couldn't because he was too tall. 

Eddie sits back in his seat, smiling satisfied and starting the car. 

“ _Yee-haw_.” Richie’s voice cracks on the _yee_.

xxxx

They don’t make it to Oklahoma City by 4pm, but Eddie admits that he hadn’t really expected to in the first place. Not with Richie in the car, stopping at every interesting thing on the sides of the road. He doesn’t mind that either, though, he says. Without Richie stopping them they wouldn’t have met Travis or had the chance to torture Ben with their big hats. 

The city is pretty nice, though. They drop all their stuff in the hotel and don’t _immediately_ pass out this time. Instead they leave to wander the streets with Ted, take in the sights, and find something to eat. They’re limited by the hour and by location that will allow them in with a dog, but neither of them really mind too much. 

The city is bright and colorful and interesting, but it’s also disgustingly oppressively humid. After days in the dry desert heat, cloudless skies and evaporating sweat, it’s a direct shock to the system. Eddie gains a darkened sweat patch between his shoulder blades that is like, unfairly compelling and hot compared to Richie’s nasty pitters and damp neckline of his t-shirt. Ted suffers the most, though, and it’s because of him that they decide to head back into the sweet relief of the air conditioned hotel for the evening. 

Mike calls Eddie’s phone when they’re both in bed in the hotel, freshly showered and cooled down from the hazy evening heat.

“Hey Mikey!” Eddie answers quickly. He clicks the phone onto speaker in the middle of Mike’s return greeting.

“Just got in!” His warm smile can be heard in his voice and it hits Richie with this wave of _sad_ unlike any of the others he’s spoken to when they’ve called. He misses Mike, he realizes. He hopes he got to make that trip to Florida. “I always forget how nice this place is.”

“How’s Ben coping with no longer being the most beautiful man in the house?” Richie asks.

Evidently, they’re on speaker on Mike’s end too, because Bill can be heard shouting a feeble _’hey!’_ in the background. It’s mostly drowned out by laughter though, Mike’s and someone else. 

“Sorry, Big Bill, you know it’s true.” He slouches down against the headboard, shoulder smashed right up against Eddie’s. “You still rank ahead of me, though, relax.”

Eddie looks at him from the corner of his eye, but doesn’t pipe up to add anything. 

“Anyway I was just calling to check in,” Mike says. “Let everyone know I’m here.”

“Alrighty!” Eddie says, cheery. _Alrighty?_ Is he Ace Ventura? “Good night!”

Good nights are echoed from all around, multiple voices from the background of Mike’s call that it’s hard to really identify who is and isn’t present. 

Eddie’s on him before he can even drop the phone down to the mattress, sitting on his thighs and keeping him pressed back against the headboard. 

“What the fuck was that?” He asks. He’s leaned close, forehead almost pressed right up against Richie’s. 

“Uh.” Richie blinks, trying to get Eddie’s very close face in focus. “What was what?”

“With Bill,” he says. For one single mind boggling second, Richie thinks Eddie is expressing _jealousy_ that he commented on Bill’s level of attractiveness, but that doesn’t make any sense at all. “The self-deprecating shit.”

“Wh- It was a joke!” 

“Was it?” Eddie squints down at him. 

“Bill is a good looking guy.” For people who are into short intelligent looking types with tasteful grey streaks of hair.

“You-” Eddie kisses him, hands coming up to smush his cheeks in, cradling his head. “-are good looking.”

“I’m tall,” Richie corrects. He knows all the jokes; no need to have anything else to offer when you’re over six feet. “Bill’s like 5’2””

Eddie skirts around the distraction bait like an old pro. Dives right into the meat of the conversation. 

“You promised.” One of Eddie’s fingers, short and bluntly rounded, completely different to Richie’s squared rough fingertips, presses firm into the middle of Richie’s forehead. “No more of that.”

Richie has never promised any such thing, but he supposes it’s possible somewhere in the unknown history of this reality with Eddie it’s possible he has. Self deprecation is like half his shtick. Is it still punching down if he’s punching himself? 

“Right, sorry.” He smiles but he can feel that it’s not as reassuring as he was aiming for. 

It must work well enough, because Eddie pats his cheek once, kisses him sweetly, and flops back over to his own side of the bed. 

They fall into bed all curled up, the sounds of a still busy city echoing quietly outside of their room window (with the chair pressed close for Ted). Richie presses close, buries his nose in Eddie’s hair and breathes him in. He smells so good, and with nothing else to think about, his mind trails back to his big L-word realization in the car. It feels impossible that that was just this morning.

“Hey, Eds,” he whispers. He can watch the tiny shiver roll over Eddie’s neck.

Eddie only grunts at him, half asleep, breath already going deep and slow.

“I love you.”

He’s never said the words to anyone before. Not in the romantic sense, anyway, he’s said it plenty of times to his parents growing up and to his friends, especially amongst the Losers. It wasn’t some deep significant thing when thrown around them, it was never this. Realizing it inside of his head and saying the words out loud are somehow very different. Where before he had a sense of calm instead is a sense of… sweating palms.

He means them. Every syllable. And he’s regretted being too much of a coward to say them in a filthy sewer under a craggy abandoned house watched Eddie bleed to death for _months_. He called Stan a pussy at dinner and he couldn’t even spit out the three words that took up all that space inside of him for 30 years when he thought it was his last chance to ever say them. Stan showed up to the fight, he helped save them all _despite_ the fear. 

Eddie stretches, his arm lifts and reaches back behind him searching blindly for Richie’s head. He finds his mark, however sleep-drunk clumsy he may be, and pats him like he’s petting a good dog, tangling his fingers in the mess of his hair after the last pat and dropping his arm back down.

“Love you, too.”

Saying it felt good, scary, palm sweating satisfying.

Hearing it back is that times a million. He’s glad Eddie is too far asleep to feel his hands like slip’n’slide mats against his chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oatman is a real place, I've been there and it's great. ALSO I did take the stepson cowboy hat joke from dril no I will not apologize.
> 
> PS I am now qianwanshi @ twitter also


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five days on the road together is just plain too much for these people.

They actually, for once, don’t rush out to get on the road as quickly as possible in the morning. They wake up late, Eddie on his back and Richie on his front, a distance away but close enough for the ends of one arm and leg to drape over Eddie’s body. 

The room is so dark Richie assumes at first that it’s the middle of the night, still. As his senses come around and, step by step, he wakes up, he hears the pattering against the window and realizes it’s just raining. 

“Oh shit.” He checks his phone, groggily slaps at Eddie’s chest and shoulder. “It’s almost 9.”

Eddie launches from loose and relaxed with sleep to tense and upright the fastest that Richie has ever seen him move. His hair stands straight up on one side and he has red pillow crease marks on his cheek. He still hasn’t shaved, he refuses to believe that he left his razor in Palm Springs and won’t buy a replacement, and while his hair doesn’t seem to grow as fast as Richie’s does it’s still there. A little patchy, but there.

“What the fuck?” Eddie grabs his phone, blinks fiercely at it to clear his eyes. “Nine?! How?” 

He scrambles out of bed a mess, legs so tangled in the sheet the whole thing is ripped away from Richie. 

Ted, always connected to Eddie and his movements, perks up immediately at the other side of the room. 

“Up!” Eddie barks. Something fabric lands on Richie’s back, then another something. Eddie’s hurling clothes at him like they’ve been caught red-handed and Richie is going to sneak out his bedroom window. (A fantasy he had really actually held after he saw it in a movie as a teenager, as if being busted by Sonia Kaspbrak wouldn’t end in his swift execution.) A pair of socks wrapped in a ball hits the back of his head with a thud. “Get up! We have to go.”

The skies are dark and cloudy as they leave the city. Richie remembers summers in Maine as a kid, when the heat would swell and soak around them like a big humid blanket and everyone would know a storm was coming. How the air would cool down and Derry would carry a palpable relief with it once the storm passed, only for the humidity to gradually build again for the next one.

Oklahoma, apparently, did not get the memo about cooling the fuck down with the rain. Richie’s glasses fog up when they exit the air conditioned hotel because it’s _still_ humid and disgusting. They’re soaked on the way to the car, shirts clinging uncomfortably. Ted waffles about finding a patch of grass that meets his high peeing standards while Richie stands there getting hotter and damper.

It slows their progress a little bit, driving just a bit more carefully out of the city until they escape the coverage of the clouds. Once they do, though, it’s very nice, actually. The skies are bright blue and full of clouds so fluffy and white they look fake almost, it’s a big difference to the blue blank skies of the desert.

“I can’t believe we slept in.” Eddie isn’t as annoyed as Richie would have expected him to be, especially considering how snappy he gets over minor annoyances. “I thought you set an alarm!”

“I thought you set an alarm…” Richie admits. 

“No unplanned stops,” Eddie says, voice firm. “Not if we want to make it to Graceland and actually see any of it.” 

“Yes, _sir_ ,” Richie agrees dutifully. 

Eddie squints at him like he hadn’t expected such a quick acceptance. “Really?”

“Well, honey,” Richie lowers his voice, curls his lip, leans into a slow drawl. A mediocre Elvis impression at best. “I do wanna see Graceland.”

He gets a mildly impressed bob of the head from Eddie, accepting frown pulling at his dimples into a sad puppy expression. “Not bad, that new?”

“Yep!” Richie grins and winks. “Practiced last night while you showered.”

“Does that mean I get to hear it the whole way there?” 

“You know it, babe.” 

——

They drive over a lake with a great view, Eu-something. It would make for a pretty sunset, or ideal to go float out on like either of them are the type to go fishing. Better than the Salton Sea in Palm Springs, which is manmade, drying up, and often wafts the smell of rotten egg into the city.

The bridge across it is long, and Eddie spells out the same thoughts in Richie’s mind. 

“Remember those bridges over Chesapeake?” He asks. “Those scared the shit out of me as a kid.”

Richie _does_ remember, but only as of like, 45 seconds ago. Eddie has years of recovered memories, he has to remind himself. Richie has months, most of which he has spent so drunk even the recovered memories are hazy. 

One summer, he can’t remember how it happened, Eddie had been allowed to go with his family on a little road trip down the coast. It wasn’t some extended thing, no lengthy beach stay, but Richie had cherished every moment together in the back seat while his parents drove. 

“I remember you turning green.” Looking out over the water, it felt like driving right on top of the bay. It even had Richie sitting a little more tense in his seat, but he never would have admitted it. 

Eddie flips him off. The bridge is behind them. 

“There’s this bridge in like, Alabama, I think.” Richie ignores the finger entirely. “It’s so long that in the middle you can’t see land on any side.”

“Ew!” Eddie twists his back like he’s shaking off a chill. “Who the fuck would make that?”

——

They fall into silence as is wont to happen from time to time, even between two of the loudest people who have ever gotten married. Richie naps in the passenger seat and wakes up some time later, the scenery hasn’t changed a bit and it makes the perception of time go all nebulous and weird around them. 

He ends up breaking the silence, predictably. Humming along to the music, commenting on the look of a tree outside, and then doing the same with an Elvis voice. 

“Was he even a good actor?” He asks. 

“I dunno,” Eddie says. “I remember my mom liked one of his movies, but I don’t remember it being good.”

“He was no Brando, I feel like.” He clears his throat. “No, yknow, _’an offer he can’t refuse’_.”

He delivers the line with an Elvis voice that makes Eddie blow a raspberry of a laugh through his lips. 

As is true with every school class clown, it only serves to encourage Richie even further. He keeps on, spitting out increasingly absurd movie lines in a more and more cartoonish Elvis voice. 

“Stop!” Eddie chokes out through wild laughter. “You sound like Johnny Bravo.”

“It- _ah-huh_ \- it puts the lotion in the basket, honey.” He sneers, over the top. “Or it gets the hose again, _huh_!”

Eddie sails into wicked laughter, finally pulling one hand from the wheel to wipe a tear from his eye. “You’re so not funny, oh my god.”

He used to do the same thing when they were kids. In their questionably stable dug out clubhouse underground when Richie would do his best _Roger Rabbit_ impressions. It would draw laughs out of everyone, even those who were engrossed in their own conversations across the room would give their own baffled half-aware chuckle at the ruckus. But Eddie would shriek through laughing _‘you’re not even funny, asshole!’_. Those were the times Richie knew he’d really got off a good one. It feels the same now. 

“I’m going to leave you in Graceland,” Eddie continues. “I swear to god.”

xxxx

Their entry into Arkansas is marked by even greener and lusher scenery passing right by them. Richie thinks that Ted would love to take off running wildly in one of the grassy fields right up until they pull over to refuel and find restrooms and it’s somehow even _more_ humid than Oklahoma was. It’s not even threatening to storm, it’s a perfectly normal day. 

“There’s something fucking wrong with this state,” Eddie says when he _finally_ shuffles back into the car. He wipes his forehead with the inside of his tank top. “Why’s it so fucking hot?”

“I don’t know.” Richie’s buckled into the drivers side again, just waiting for Eddie to settle. “Let’s just go before someone offers to pray for us.”

They drive through the rest of Arkansas at a clip, five and some hours in one go (with a very brief bathroom stop in the middle) all the way to Memphis. Things keep getting greener outside the windows as they drive, and Richie’s Elvis impressions keep getting worse. He sings along to “Jailhouse Rock” for an entire fifteen seconds before Eddie skips it for something else. 

The heat has him a little extra grumpy, but not really in a bad way necessarily. A little snappier, a little more furrow to his brows, the slightest bit less patient with Richie’s bullshit. It doesn’t worry Richie, he’s seen Eddie genuinely mad and this is not it. 

Maybe it’s the cicadas screaming all around them, a constant background noise even with the radio playing. Something about them unhinging something in Eddie’s brain. Or maybe it’s just the endless days on the road finally getting to him. Richie doesn’t mind so much, but he knows being in a confined space for extended periods can really get to some people. 

He wonders if it would settle Eddie’s mood if Richie blew him. Not while driving, obviously, that all really had been jokes, but something later. Would it let Eddie burn off all his pent-up energy? What’s he like? Loud? Would he grab Richie’s hair? He’s thinking about it before he’s really aware he’s thinking about, idle brain shooting off into the wildlands before he can stop it.

Before, back in Palm Springs, Eddie had such an easy confidence to him. Now that Richie isn’t being steamrolled by it, he can see it with some more clarity. They’re married. Eddie wasn’t fucking _Richie_ , he was fucking his husband. Which, yeah, same thing, but okay. While Richie was freaking out about like, seeing Eddie naked and touching scar tissue, it was all old and familiar in Eddie’s eyes. 

He’s done it before, sucked dick, but it never meant anything. It’s always been quick and messy, who needs technique when both parties don’t care and are only after one thing. 

He’d like to take his time with Eddie, he thinks. Really try it out, pull close and feel him in and around him. Get him to react and enjoy himself the way he had just a few nights ago. 

“Are you that upset I changed the radio?”

Eddie’s voice pulls him back to reality like he’s crashing through the clouds. 

“No, I don’t care, I was just thinking.” He flaps a hand between them, like he would care about Elvis being on the radio or not. 

“Looked serious,” Eddie comments. 

“Nah.” Richie shifts. Darts a look at Eddie and back forward. “Would it be in poor taste to blow you in the guest house at Graceland?”

“Rich!” Eddie coughs, choking around his surprise. “Jesus.”

“Well! It’s what I was thinking about!” 

“Yes, it’s poor taste,” Eddie confirms, but he’s smiling, the dimple in his right cheek giving him away no matter how hard he tries to hide it. “But we’ll see.”

That. Was not the reaction Richie expected. Anticipation settles between his shoulders like a chill and doesn’t leave. 

——

In all honesty, they didn’t do very much research about Graceland before deciding to go. It’s on the way, it’s a national treasure, it gives Richie the excuse to sing along to “Hound Dog” on the way into the city, why wouldn’t they go? Eddie booked them a room at the guest house the day they had the idea and that was that. 

The drive up is more understated than either of them expected. For a guy who was famous for wearing spangled capes and tight pants with tassels, the turn off for his house could be easily mistaken for any other side street in Memphis. Even the mansion is pretty small. They’re given a trifold map when they check in that lists everything to visit on the property, and when Richie saw ‘The Mansion’ he had an idea of what to expect. He lives in LA, he’s no stranger to houses so big and sprawling you get lost in them, completely pointless other than to show off to the world how off the walls rich you are. 

The Elvis mansion is not that, it’s a fairly big two-story home, not unlike the types they would have seen in richer Maine neighborhoods than their own. 

They get thrown into a tour with a small group of people significantly older than them and shuffled through the mansion room by room, gaping into rooms heavily stuck in the seventies in all aspects. 

Richie whistles low when they reach “The Jungle Room,” named appropriately for its hideous decorations. He’s lucky to be drowned out by the tour guide listing off details of evenings spent in the room enjoying whatever and blah blah when he leans over to murmur in Eddie’s ear. “Guess you can’t buy taste, huh?”

As if he himself doesn’t have _money_ and isn’t wearing a shirt with patterned short sleeves that don’t match each other _or_ the rest of the shirt over a plain T-shirt. As if Eddie doesn’t share that money and has the cheer diva bag he bought at walmart hanging from his shoulders. 

Eddie’s eyebrows are practically in his hair. “Guess so.”

He’s less luckily _not_ drowned out by the guide when they walk past some other rooms and Richie leans low to whisper in Eddie’s ear again. “Think that’s that bathroom where he beefed it?” 

It’s a whisper, but an old woman in front of them who must have her hearing aid turned up so high she could hear a mosquito fart turns back to shoot Richie a dark look. He gives his most innocent smile, only slightly tarnished by Eddie’s pointy elbow digging into his side. 

There’s a museum tour as well, with clips of movies Elvis was in projected onto walls, a select few in darkened alcoves with audio and all. They pause on one for a while, watching Elvis and his romantic lead talking on a boat for a minute before moving on. 

At the end, of course, is a gift shop. Not much calls out to either of them, they’re about 25 years too young for that, but it’s fun to poke around. It reminds him of his mom, she had all those old records she would bring out from time to time. She was no fanatic, but she would spit out the name “Doctor Nick” like it left a bad taste in her mouth. Richie just liked the raucous noise of it. 

Then he got a Walkman and an allowance and learned what raucous noise _really_ meant. 

They miss the automobile museum because it’s closed by the time they escape everything else. It’s not the end of the world, poor Ted has been alone in their room for a few hours anyway, so they toddle back together. At some point the cicadas gave way to crickets and frogs, still an all-surrounding cacophonous noise, but hitting different. Maybe it’s the darkening sky and the fireflies. It doesn’t feel like madness echoing around them, it feels serene. 

Ted doesn’t even look up when they enter the room. He’s on his back in the center of the bed snoring like he owns the place. 

“Dude, Elvis’s house is kinda ugly.” Richie drops into the first available seat to rip off his shoes, throwing them carelessly at his bag. 

“Can you be respectful?” Eddie tuts at him. “He’s dead.”

“Just because he’s dead I can’t critique his interior design?” Richie scoffs. “Can’t wait to hear you praising my fashion sense at my funeral.”

“Fat chance.” Eddie kicks his shoes off. He pulls off his cheer diva bag and throws it at Richie. “Got you something.”

Richie pulls apart the drawstring bag. Folded tiny inside is a gaudy red Hawaiian shirt, famous from one of Elvis’ dozens of movies. 

“Eddie!” Richie calls, delighted. “Look at this!”

“Yeah?” 

Richie pulls off his first obnoxious shirt to replace it with this new obnoxious shirt. It fits, it’s blinding, their friends will all jeer at him for it: “it’s perfect.”

Eddie looks pleased with himself, bordering on outright smug. 

“Ah told my mom about you.” Richie adopts an overly breathy trans-Atlantic high pitched voice. Hunches one shoulder at Eddie, coy. 

It takes a minute to hit, he can see it in Eddie’s eyes; confusion dawning into realization. The movie clip they watched earlier. Not the one with a Hawaiian shirt, but the only one Richie can really quote. A smile spreads across Eddie’s face, pulls at his crows feet. 

“Told her ah found a million dollar boyfriend in a five and ten cent store.” He tosses hair he doesn’t have back over his shoulder, all 1950s actress.

“Don’t fall in love with me,” Eddie warns him, deepening his voice, just like the movie. They didn’t have full context to the scene, but it rang of ‘I’m a _bad boy_ and you’re a _nice girl_.’

“Aren’t you ever going to kiss me tonight?” Somewhere in the middle he shifted into full Judy Garland, but the point is made. 

Eddie does kiss him, and it’s over the top and stupidly theatrical for standing together in the middle of a hotel room, wearing a souvenir Hawaiian shirt with the tags still hanging off of it. It’s good, though. It’s where he wants to be. Standing anywhere with Eddie Kaspbrak smiling against his mouth. 

(He doesn’t blow Eddie in the guest house hotel at Graceland, not for any reason, it just rolls out that way. Still, he is a little disappointed.)

xxxx

It takes SO long to drive through Tennessee. Every time Richie thinks they must be at least halfway through, he checks the map and finds that they’re not even close. He feels like he’s losing his mind, like he’s on those stairs in that old video game that just go on and on forever if you don’t have the right key or whatever. It’s crazy-inducing. 

It’s pretty, at least. The state keeps getting more green as they go, with huge thatches of wildflowers growing freely on either side of the highway. It's a nice difference to LA, all overdeveloped asphalt and cropped down dry grass. The roads begin to wind and, for the first time since they were in New Mexico, they run into real actual hills as they hit the Appalachians. 

Eddie voluntarily pulls over at an overlook and they take pictures of the gentle interweaving slopes all covered in trees. A stark difference to the jagged snow-peaked mountains of the Rockies. No more sheer cliff roads, all ups and downs with popping eardrums instead. Eddie asks a kind old man to take a picture of them together (with Ted) with the mountains behind them that they send ahead to the losers. 

‘Must be getting close! Us too.’ Stan texts them back. 

‘East coast east coast east coast!’ Mike sends. 

Eddie’s road rage throughout their entire trip has been reasonable, present but mostly kept to subdued mumblings and swearing at people under his breath. Most of them deserve it anyway, as far as Richie sees it. 

This changes in Nashville. 

Traffic through Nashville gets very suddenly very bad. The first time Eddie gets cut off by someone with no turn signal, he swears mostly to himself. The third time, he growls and clenches his jaw so hard Richie can hear his teeth crunch against each other. 

“Let me drive,” Richie insists. 

“I’m fine.” When spoken through a growl with a visible temple vein, those words are not very reassuring. 

“We don’t need you to kill us with your road rage before we get there.” Richie isn’t even doing anything useful, would gladly take over driving in a heartbeat. He’s been shopping online for a dog-themed baby on board sticker for the car. 

Within the next five minutes Eddie is pulled into a gas station so mad Richie can see the steam coming out of his ears. 

“You fucking drive.” He hands the keys over and disappears inside, reappearing later with two shitty coffees and a candy bar. 

He must see the surprised look Richie shoots the candy bar in his hand because he glares right back. “Fuck you, I need it.” As if proving his point, he takes a large bite and chews it, grimacing, unmistakably not enjoying it even remotely. 

Back on the road, Eddie produces a baseball cap from the glove compartment and pulls it down over his eyes. He slouches down low and doesn’t allow himself to look out any window. 

“Just tell me when we’re through.”

——

They do survive Nashville, some way or another. It helps when Eddie falls asleep with Ted in his lap, one arm wrapped tight around himself and the hat still pulled over his face. Ted rests his snout on the door, little puffs of air fogging up the window on every exhale. Apparently not as determined to crush Eddie’s balls as he had been Richie’s, go figure. Eddie is clearly the favorite dad. 

Eddie snorts himself awake a good half hour outside of Nashville. Richie isn’t nearly as high-strung a driver as Eddie but even he could go for a cigarette. He gives Eddie shit about how loudly he was snoring. He wasn’t snoring, but he deserves it for having the audacity to be so goddamn cute all the time. 

They originally planned on stopping by Dollywood until they looked at booking tickets and realized they both had very confused ideas about what Dollywood is. Eddie said _‘Oh, there’s roller coasters,’_ in such a disappointed tone that it was almost a joke. They both thought it was some gaudy dedication with casinos and shops and bad Dolly Parton impersonators… all of which may still be true, but not enough so that it drew them in and so the idea was scrapped quickly. 

Asheville is where they land in the end, finally in North Carolina and able to celebrate the nearing end to their trip. 

“Thank god we only have one more day.” Eddie stands in the parking lot of their hotel doing his elaborate runner’s stretches. Richie tries not to drop his suitcase on his toes. “My ass cannot handle anymore driving after this.”

“You need some more cushion for the pushin’, Eds!” He ignores Eddie’s wrinkled nose and murmured ‘ew’. 

They go to a garden to wander around a while. With no other pre-made plans, it’s what the hotel worker recommended. It’s nice, open and dog friendly so they don’t have to leave Ted behind. It’s a weird mix of winding paths full of multicolored flowers and giant LEGO structures of praying mantises and hummingbirds. The sculptures are, to be fair, pretty damn cool, but weird. 

Richie finds Eddie at a wooden overlook after disappearing to find a less offensive spot for Ted to do his business than the middle of a tourist garden. He’s looking out at the rolling mountains under the shade of a magnolia that still has some stubborn blossoms clinging desperately to the branches. He’s lit all golden in the light shining from behind them, shuffling his feet and… talking?

At first Richie assumes Eddie is talking to Ted. He wouldn’t really put it past him, he more or less already does, giving full sentence orders rather than one word commands. 

Then he turns and Richie sees his phone pressed to his ear. His face lights up when he sees Richie standing there, hopefully assuming he just arrived and not accurately guessing that he was standing there staring like a creep. 

“It’s Stan!” Eddie calls over to him. Then softer, when Richie gets closer, “He and Patty just got in.”

“Hi!” A woman’s voice shouts through the speaker. Somewhere in the distance, Stan’s voice echoes the same greeting. 

It hits home very suddenly that Richie is going to be seeing them all again tomorrow and how eager he is to do it. He hasn’t seen any of them in so long, and he recognizes it’s by his own stubborn idiotic choosing, but he can be terrified of something and long for it at the same time. He’s been doing it his entire life. 

There’s such a ruckus of noise on the other end of the phone that Richie and Eddie hold no hope of understanding what’s happening. There’s talking and laughing and cooing and the phone keeps getting brushed up against something and rustling loudly into the speaker. Richie leans his forearms along the banister next to Eddie, looking at the mountains and thinking about his oldest dumbest friends. 

Everything goes muffled and quiet and, a second later, Bill is on the line. 

“Sorry, guys, you know how it gets.”

Eddie has a fond, unbothered smile on his face. 

“We can’t wait for you to get here!” Bill sounds good, happy. Far from the man trying desperately to hold everything together Richie last spoke to. 

“I can’t wait to be done driving!” Eddie exclaims. 

Bill laughs. “That bad, huh?”

“It’s not all bad.” Eddie hip checks Richie, bringing him back to the present with a cheeky wink. 

“Between Eddie and the dog I don’t know who’s been farting up the car worse.” 

“Ugh!” Eddie hip checks him again, harder, sharp elbow joining in on the fray. “That’s not true! Richie’s the one who drools all over the door when he’s sleeping.”

Richie shoves him back. He doesn’t yell about how it’s not true because it _is_ true, but he can still tussle about it. 

“Well you haven’t killed each other at least,” Bill says. 

“No,” Eddie agrees. “It’d be too hard to find another rich husband.”

He says it, but the fingers of his free hand tangle absently with Richie’s. Not holding his hand, just weaving together and dancing around to a rhythm of his own. 

“Love you guys,” Bill still has a laugh in his voice. “See you tomorrow.”

“Bye, Bill!” they yell over each other, making a loud scene under the magnolias. 

They grab dinner at a place with decent patio seating. He hasn’t said anything, but Richie thinks Eddie likes watching the fireflies light up the streets around them. Ted sits patiently next to them, tirelessly optimistic about his chances of one of them dropping food down to him. Like what they need is a dog with gastrointestinal issues inside their car for 7 hours tomorrow. 

They sleep close and warm, Ted at their ankles. 

xxxx

Richie and Eddie both vehemently agree that they are sick and tired of being on a road trip. They want to get to the beach house as quickly as they can and they are absolutely one hundred percent don’t you dare suggest otherwise flying home. They come to this decision via argument, though Richie can’t pin down _why_ they’re arguing while they’re agreeing with each other. 

Things settle down, though, and aren’t even particularly tense after arguing. Richie guesses it’s a married thing and doesn’t allow himself to dwell on it. Especially not once Eddie holds his hand over the middle console again while Richie drives. Even when he falls into a nap and his grip goes slack, he doesn’t let go. 

_Get through North Carolina as quickly as is responsibly possible_ is the agreement they come to. So they bypass all the weird tourist traps and only stop when they need to. It’s okay to miss the giant chairs, Richie insists, he’ll just take a picture of Eddie in a regular chair and pass it off as the real thing. Eddie delivers the first wedgie threat Richie has gotten since the early 90s. Richie whines a little bit when they bypass the world’s largest replica of the world’s largest lighthouse, a gimmick too good to pass up, but the blow is softened by the view of the water that comes right after.

They stop at a gas station before they ditch the mainland entirely. Eddie stomps back to the car with a cheap disposable razor in his hand. Finally admitting he left his behind.

“Hey,” Eddie says between listening intently to the voice of the phone gps. “I know you know, but don’t be a dick about Mike’s breakup, ok?”

Considering Richie hadn’t known Mike _had_ a breakup, he agrees pretty easily. 

“I think he’s still…” Eddie trails off and never gets to what Mike still is. “You know, being the only single one even if it’s just us.”

“Yeah, sure,” Richie insists. “Lips sealed.”

Eddie eyes him, but drops the topic. 

Driving through the Outer Banks is weird. It’s very long and narrow, and it feels like it’ll be forever before they hit the access road to the house that Ben sent them and address to this morning. It’s quiet in that way that feels completely separated from the rest of the world. Which, after five days on the road facing the rest of the world, feels like real relief. 

The house they pull up to is huge, one of those rentals that multiple families go in on together. It feels at first glance like an obnoxious show of wealth before he remembers that they _are_ multiple families splitting it. With nine adults and a baby, they’ll need the room. It’s bright blue, nothing like the soft stucco blue of the Palm Springs house, with a multilayered wooden deck that winds around the house all the way up to a large lookout. 

No sooner have they cut the engine to the car do the doors of the house open up and allow absolute chaos to pour out onto them. 

Ben is first out, but Bill is hot on his heels. One set of hands grabs Ted’s leash, another pulls at a suitcase, and they’re being rushed inside into a flurry of waiting open arms and tight hugs from everyone in a blur. Richie thinks Ben hugs him twice, but it’s too hard to keep track. 

“I’ll help with bags,” Ben calls over the chaos. “You guys are at the top.”

That grabs Eddie’s attention away from where he’s petting Ben’s dog Laika, much larger and fluffier than Ted. “What?!”

“Loudest couple farthest away,” Bev says. “We had a vote.”

“We are not-!” Eddie screeches, stops himself short when it is terribly loud. He continues in a more subdued tone, “not _that_ loud.”

Richie catches Mike smiling behind his hand, physically pushing back a laugh. 

“Fine.” Eddie grabs the strap of his duffel bag with a fist, clearly trying not to huff and expose his annoyance. “That’s fine.”

They heave the bags up a couple flights of stairs into the lone highest room of the house. It’s not really that bad, if a bit awkwardly placed and sized, but there must be some story attached to why the room calls for a _vote_. It’s plainly decorated with a tasteful beach theme as these places often are, and it attaches to the wild winding deck through a closed in porch with outdoor seating. 

“At least we get this!” Richie jabs a finger at the porch. “We can claim it for us only, no straights allowed.”

Ben snorts.

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees. “Except for Ben because he helped with the bags.”

“Hell yeah,” Richie agrees even harder. 

“Thanks guys,” Ben says earnestly. He does everything earnestly, really, it must be the eyes. “I’ll let the others know.”

“You’re an honorary gay now, Ben!” Richie shouts after him as he leaves. 

——

Ben is wearing Richie’s cowboy hat when they get back downstairs and he looks unironically good in it, the bastard. The Losers are all scattered, most lounging all over the big L-shaped couch together. Ted is laying on Mike’s chest, enjoying a leisurely ear rub. Bill and Audra are at the short end of the L, Beverly lounges so deep into the corner cushions she’s almost vanished into them, her feet in Ben’s lap. They all look relaxed, a stark change to the last time Richie saw them. 

They fall into an empty spot on the couch together next to Mike, relieved to be sitting anywhere other than an uncomfortable car. 

Stan’s in a plush chair alone, leaning forward toward the short end of the L to get a look at what Bill and Audra are looking at on a phone. He looks healthy and happy, in a T-shirt and shorts, he has a short beard coming in that looks significantly more intentional than what Eddie has. Richie’s eyes bug when he leans away from Bill to the short bamboo table to grab a glass of iced tea, a long scar the length of his forearm visible. He was bandaged in Derry. Somehow Richie hadn’t considered actually seeing the scar. The shock of it hits harder than Eddie’s did. 

“Richie.”

“Huh?” He startles out of his thoughts. 

“I was talking about the giant chairs,” Eddie explains. 

“Oh, yeah.” Richie blinks away from Stan over to Mike who is listening patiently. “Giant coffee pot, too.”

“Yeah! I don’t _get_ it.” Eddie’s curled into Richie’s side, chin on his shoulder. Richie can tell he’s sleepy. 

He looks back over at Stan, a quick glance, ruined by the fact that Stan is already looking at him. 

“What, Richie?” His eyes are bouncing around their side of the couch, ready for whatever he thinks Richie’s going to say. 

_I missed you_ Richie thinks. _Are you okay_. “I thought Patty was the only beard you needed,” he says instead. 

A loud squawk of a laugh explodes from behind Stan, in the kitchen. 

Eddie’s breath of a laugh puffs out against his neck.

“Seriously, what the fuck.” Richie waves a hand out at Stan. “Did you get hotter?”

“He did!” comes from the kitchen again. A moment later a blonde woman trails out, dressed in some long flowy dress and holding the fat Uris baby in one arm. 

She looks like Stan. The baby, not Patty, that would be weird. In the eyes, though, as much as a newish baby can look like anyone. If he looks for much longer, though, he’ll cry, so he stops. 

Patty sits on the cushy arm of the chair despite there being plenty of room next to Bill on the couch. Stan’s fingers pull like magnets to baby Andy’s socked foot, brushing idly back and forth.

“Well what about Eddie!” Stan points. “He has a beard.”

“Yeah Eddie, what’s the deal?” Bill asks. 

Eddie grumbles.

“He refused to believe he left his razor at home and I didn’t,” Richie explains. Bev cackles, presses her face into the back of the couch to stifle the noise. 

Time melts away as they all catch up, and it’s nice. Conversations split off and overlap and devolve into chaos before splitting off again into entirely different groups. One minute Richie is in deep with Mike about The Colorado Bone Wars (Mike knows a lot about the archaeology of it, Richie knows a lot of boner jokes) and the next he’s in conversation with Bill from opposite sides of the couch about something Bill is writing. Stan shares a work story, holding Andy and a bottle in one arm and hand so he can gesture with the other. 

Richie feels the most at home he’s felt in months. 

“I’m gonna go have a nap,” Eddie announces after he’s already definitely been asleep on Richie’s shoulder for several minutes. He shuffles away on unsteady feet toward the stairs, throwing a one-fingered salute over his shoulder when Bev shouts _‘old!’_ and slowly disappears toward their room. 

“He okay?” Mike asks, still closest to Richie on the couch. 

“Oh, yeah.” Richie nods. “Just the travel, you know? We’re flying home.”

The admission gets some laughs out of everyone. 

——

One of them puts on a movie, Richie doesn’t see who, but it quells the noise at least for a little while. Richie and Mike jab each other every time one of them dares to yawn. At one point, Richie whispers to him that he’ll put Mike’s hand in warm water if he falls asleep first. When Mike argues that technically Eddie fell asleep first, Richie reminds him that he values his life too much for that. Plus Eddie knows where he sleeps and is not morally opposed to revenge. 

It’s still only early evening by the time credits roll, they’re all just officially old now. Something about pushing play on a movie activates a deep-buried nap instinct. 

“I’m cooking tonight!” Ben announces when the credits start to roll. _He_ seems wide awake, somehow.

“That means stir fry,” Beverly adds knowingly from where she’s sinking even deeper into the soft couch cushions. 

“Yep.” Ben claps his hands in front of him as he stands. “Bill and Mike on vegetable cutting, let’s go.”

“Since when!” Mike objects. 

“Since you fell asleep and skipped dishes duty last night,” Ben responds. Then thoughtfully tacks on, “Old man.”

Mike’s _tsks_ but stands anyway, trailing into the kitchen with everyone else. 

Patty, Beverly, and Audra stay seated, murmuring amongst themselves in a secret little group. Richie opens his mouth to tease, some joke about… he hadn’t decided yet, he was most likely going to just start and see what words came out. He’s stopped by Stan clearing his throat and catching his eye, jerking his head in a clear _‘let’s go’_.

“You okay, baby?” Stan asks as he stands. Patty pauses just briefly in her conversation to smile up at him and nod. Andy in her lap looks comfortable and unbothered chewing on some kind of ring. 

They wind up sitting by the decent sized pool on the lowest layer of the deck, legs hanging over the side into the cool water. 

“How are you doing?” Stan asks, squinting through the sinking sun at Richie’s face.

It takes Richie a second. Why would stan single him out of everyone to ask weird questions to? But then it hits. 

That day with this whiskey, Eddie was on the phone. _‘Stan made me cry’_. 

“Yeah, dude.” Richie swishes his feet in the water, watching the way the minuscule air bubbles trail off into perfect spirals. “I’m fine.”

Stan continues to squint at him. “I believe you.”

He means it, that’s clear in his voice. The conviction with which he delivers his words pulling Richie’s gaze back away from the water. 

“Eddie worries about you,” Stan says after a long moment of silence passes between them. “You know he hates to show it.”

It’s the first Richie’s really thought about it. 

Eddie has no problem showing affection. He shows Richie he _cares_ every day, it’s been a trip trying to get used to it. But worrying…

Of course he was worried that day, all concerned eyebrows and damp eyes, asking if he needed to call an ambulance. He’s been so normal since then, though, that Richie had just let it go. 

Is he still worried? It didn’t seem like it while they were driving, but it computes that he would project calm as much as possible. 

Eddie grew up under the smothering force of _worry_. He knows firsthand how debilitating it can be, of course he would hesitate to check in at random, like asking after Richie’s health is anything remotely like what Sonia Kaspbrak had ever done. He’s not _so_ blind and stupid to not understand it, though, the ingrained fear. The fear that had kept Richie from drinking in college, thinking about his mother, even if he’d clearly gotten over _that_ later on.

“You think he’s worried?” Richie hates how small his voice comes out. 

“He hasn’t said anything to me.” Stan rushes through the words first, like he knows the comfort they’ll bring to Richie. Not even _Richie_ was expecting the comfort they bring, an unknown anxiety uncurling in his brain, an indistinct fear that Eddie and Stan discussed him between themselves. “But I think you scared him, a little.”

“I-“ Richie scrubs a hand over his face, over rough stubble and a travel-oily forehead and into his hair where he tugs at it. “I didn’t mean to.”

He jabs his hand at the air with his words, clenching his fingers into a fist when he catches it as an Eddie habit. 

“Of course you didn’t.” Stan pulls Richie’s hand away from his hair, fingers gentle. “You wouldn’t.”

“But I still did.”

“Mm.” Stan doesn’t hold his hand, but wraps a warm grip around his wrist so his thumb presses against Richie’s palm. “He knows you’re okay, but it wouldn’t hurt to tell him you are.”

Richie’s shoulder bounces against Stan’s still one when he laughs, just a quick chuckle of disbelief. 

“What the fuck, dude.” His elbow finds Stan’s ribs. “You become a dad and you get all wise on us?”

“I’ve always been wise compared to you guys,” Stan says. “It’s why I keep hanging out with you.”

Pretty rich considering Richie remembers Stan copying all of his English homework in eleventh grade, but he doesn’t dredge it up. 

He gets Stan’s shorts all wet when he pulls his legs out of the pool to stand, pulling a mildly annoyed sound from him. 

“Where are you going?” Stan asks. 

“To talk to Eddie!” Richie calls back, already taking to the deck stairs that lead up and up, into the enclosed gays only porch. “Thanks, Standrew!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't give a shit about elvis so naturally i wrote 3k about his stupid house like an idiot  
> I'm still qianwanshi at twitter!
> 
> Sorry this took forever, I got really caught up on the dumbest, most fun idea ever with a good friend: a richie goes on the masked singer au ([here](https://twitter.com/raccooonbabey))


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Losers hang out at the beach and have a good time and nothing bad or sad happens to anyone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one took so long! I had some specific emotional notes I wanted to hit and ran into a major block trying to hit them, but I think I'm in a spot where I'm satisfied! 
> 
> Just a quick note I'm going back to make it explicit that the car Richie & Eddie road tripped in was a rental bc IfItHollers was like "are they just abandoning their car in NC to fly home" and that was kind of a good point huh

Eddie is still asleep when Richie opens the heavy sliding glass door, on his stomach facing away from the outside, one knee raised up high and sticking out from under the sheet. The huge puffy duvet is crumpled and shoved toward the empty side of the bed. He looks well and truly conked out, breathing deep and heavy after five days of hotels and shitty uncomfortable cramped car naps. 

He’s reluctant to do it, but dinner will be done soon anyway, so Richie climbs onto the bed to wake him up. He’s had a few good hours, any more and he won’t be able to sleep tonight. 

“Eds,” he whispers. Too softly to accomplish anything. He clambers closer until he’s straddling the leg Eddie doesn’t have curled and wraps one hand over his shoulder. “Spaghetti.”

Eddie startles awake, shoulders tensing and immediately relaxing into a twisting arching stretch. His eyes squeeze shut tight and pop open at the end of his stretch, all loose limbs and heavy eyelids. He looks up at Richie from the corner of his eye.

“What.” His voice is deep and groggy with sleep. 

“Dinner’ll be done soon,” Richie says, too nervous suddenly to say anything more. He feels like he’s asking Eddie to homecoming. 

His eyebrows furrow and a frown pulls down at his lips. “You came up here to crawl on top of me and wake me up because of dinner?”

“Eh.” Richie wobbles his head back and forth, the best shrug he can do when he’s resting on one forearm and a hand over Eddie. “Like fifty percent.”

Eddie smiles and rolls over in the space that Richie has unintentionally caged him into, his legs tangle and twist. The sheet follows and pulls away enough to reveal that Eddie’s shorts are gone, he’s in boxers and his tank top. His arms lift to hang back across Richie’s shoulders, one hand splaying out over his upper rib cage. He’s radiating sleep-warmth, hair soft and pushed down onto his forehead rather than his usual neat and brushed look. 

Richie can’t resist burying his face in Eddie’s neck. Not even doing anything, just stealing that warmth and breathing him in. 

Eddie uses that downward momentum of Richie leaning in to him to pull him even closer, until Richie collapses his whole weight onto Eddie because he’s not a fuckin twunky little jock who can hold a plank.

“What’s the other fifty?” Eddie asks. 

He squirms under Richie’s weight like it’s no bother to him at all. Bends a knee and wraps his leg around one of Richie’s, foot tickling against his thigh. His hips mold into Richie’s and he’s half hard in that lazy way of the morning, where it could go either way. Like he already knows what the other fifty percent is. 

“Good dreams?” Richie mumbles into Eddie’s neck. The scratchy hair of Eddie’s beard scrapes at his temple when he moves. 

“Something like that,” Eddie confirms. One hand follows Richie’s spine to the small of his back, pressing firm. A very persuasive nonverbal _‘stay right there’_. He doesn’t continue to move right away, just stays trapped under Richie’s weight. 

Richie turns his head again, soaking in the sound of Eddie’s scruff rasping against his hair. 

“I’m shaving today,” Eddie announces. 

“Aw,” Richie whines. He lifts away enough to slide his mouth along the underside of Eddie’s jaw. Not kissing, just absorbing the feel of their scruff catching against each other’s, hooks and loops. He’s enjoying leaning into the masculinity of it. “But I like it.”

“I’m itchy.” His hips twitch and roll when Richie nips the skin under his chin, more lips than teeth. 

“Fair enough.” Richie’s shorts are something cottony and thin, he can feel every inch of where Eddie slots into the soft crease of his hip. “It’s your face.”

“Uh-huh,” Eddie agrees absently.

He seems an awful lot more concerned with dragging his hips against Richie’s in small tight circles, the most he can manage while being pinned as he is. His hand is still an insistent press against his back as if Richie would dare to pull away. As if Richie isn’t equally as turned on by now. 

They find a slow, rolling grind. 

“This-“ Richie gasps Eddie’s name when they drag together just right. “This isn’t what I came up here for either.”

“No?” 

“No.” Richie burrows into Eddie’s neck again. It’s all easier to say if he’s not being looked at. “I was supposed to tell you I appreciate you.”

“You can do both.” Eddie laughs, a little breathy. 

“And that I love you,” Richie continues. 

“I feel appreciated.” The hand at the small of Richie’s back finally moves, sliding into the back pocket of his shorts and guiding him to a rhythm, thrumming to the beat of whatever song Eddie has in his mind. “And loved.”

“I’m serious.”

“I am, too.” The hand not in Richie’s pocket grips the back of his hair and leads him away to look him in the eyes. “I do.”

Richie kisses him. Doesn’t know what else to do at that moment but kiss him. If his mouth isn’t occupied he’ll have to face the truth of his all-consuming tongue-tying love. 

“And that I’m okay,” Richie whispers forehead to forehead, still rutting against Eddie’s firm runner’s thigh.

Eddie’s lips tug down, a crooked little sentimental smile. “You’re okay.”

He sounds sure of it. Confirming Richie’s words for them both, not a desperate insistence or a question. 

“I love you, too.”

The most difficult part to fully comprehend, for Richie, is that be believes it. He believes that Eddie loves him. He isn’t struggling to accept that he deserves it, right now. It’s true, he can feel it. And for once that’s not a dick joke. 

That day in Palm Springs, in the kitchen with the whiskey. He sat for hours with an awful rolling anxiety in his gut waiting for Eddie to get home, knowing it would be immediately obvious that he’d been drinking. He was prepared for the worst: tears, yelling, anger and blame and _‘how could you do this to me’_. He remembers being a teenager and getting caught with cigarettes the first time. His dad was _so angry_ , yelling at him and spouting dental health facts in the same breath. 

But Eddie was understanding and caring. He has a crazy intuition for what Richie is feeling and knowing what he needs, apparently. He didn’t freak out, or yell, and when Richie said he wanted to move away from the whole thing, he went with him. 

Because he loves him. 

“Eddie.” His right hand wanders, down over Eddie’s soft tush to the thigh of the leg he has raised and wrapped around Richie’s, right where the leg of his boxers ends. Three fingers slide under the fabric and stay like that, feeling the tense dimpling of his muscles with every upward thrust. 

He feels so scattered, every last inch of him on fire with Eddie writhing under him, looking up at him unwavering. He’s not even winded and Richie feels like he’s just run a marathon. 

Eddie’s hands scrabble and push to fit between their bodies and tug at Richie’s shorts. Deft fingers rip at the button and zip, tugging and folding them down just far enough that they stay put at Richie’s upper thighs. They don’t need much more than that. 

_I’m gonna come just like this_. It’s a frantic realization, sudden and huge. Like he’s a fucking teenager desperately grinding with his first boyfriend. Only he hadn’t gotten to have that as a teenager, so having it while he’s well on his way to 50 years old seems like a good idea, he guesses. He buries his face back into Eddie’s neck, only this time he sucks the skin of his Adam’s apple like he’ll die if he doesn’t. Like it’ll do anything to stifle the noises he’s making. 

One of Eddie’s hands slides past his waistband, no hesitation, wrapping around his leaking erection. Richie shifts, makes more room for Eddie’s arm, uses the newly available space to get a hand around Eddie as well. He’s twitching and wet, flushed red where the top of his boxers pulled taut by Richie’s wrist exposes him. 

Eddie’s chest heaves with his breaths, deep and fast, the faintest of sounds escaping on every exhale. The fingers of his free hand clench against Richie’s shoulder hard, leaving him hoping that it’ll bruise, five perfect little circles. 

Time slows when Eddie arches and tenses under him, coming onto Richie’s hand and his own stomach. The low, hot molasses sound of his voice sinks in through Richie’s ear and uncurls out to his nerve endings and he comes not half a minute later into the all too skillful twist of Eddie’s wrist. 

Richie sinks, all of his weight on Eddie again who doesn’t seem to be bothered at all by it, even with his hand pinned awkwardly between them. 

“We should get cleaned up,” Eddie says after a long while. “Before they send Bill up here to get us.”

Grunting a vague agreement, Richie does his best to get up and move. 

“Hey.” Eddie’s hand at his shoulder clamps strong at the back of his neck. He tugs Richie into another kiss. “I love you.”

“Love you.”

It’s easier every time he says it. 

Richie quickly learns why the third floor bedroom is the least popular option: it has no attached bathroom. They have to toddle down to the second floor together mostly dressed and more or less cleaned up. As clean as Richie’s now-disgusting shirt (abandoned on the bedroom floor) will get them at least. 

It’s funny, another teenaged experience he was robbed of by fear, the world, sneaking off through the house with some boy together. He runs full bodied into Eddie’s back when they’re almost to the bathroom, eager to wash their hands. The bedroom door on the way is clicked open and Stan is stepping out backwards. He glances them over, knowing. 

“Good talk?” He looks pointedly over Eddie’s shoulder at Richie. 

Richie’s throat goes tight with the anxiety of _caught_. The fun of playing sneak vanishes when the fear of being seen becomes a very sudden reality. 

“None of your business.” Eddie easily sidesteps Stan and pulls Richie with him. “Why are you skulking?”

“I’m _not_.” Stan looks baffled by the accusation. He waves a small plastic bag between them. “Diaper duty.”

Stan bumps his elbow with Richie’s as they pass each other, and when he looks, Stan is smiling at him over his shoulder. Nothing teasing or snarky or knowing, just… pleased. He can breathe again after seeing it. It’s just Stanley. There’s nothing scary about Stanley. 

He smiles back. Eddie pulls him into the bathroom. 

Together they wash up, Eddie gently scrubs the webbing between Richie’s fingers with a damp washcloth and something about it melts deep down in his body. He lingers while Eddie shaves, watching in the mirror and draping over his back. Eddie whines that he’s a hindrance but does nothing to push him away. 

They return to the living room into a chorus of noise. Half the group is moaning about the loss of Eddie’s scraggly beard and the other half is shouting indecipherable nonsense between the loud clatter of dishes being pulled from cabinets. 

It’s an intricate weaving and bobbing and spinning out of each others way to set the table and find seats. There’s barely enough room to fit them all and definitely not enough chairs, they had to drag one in from the outside to sit awkwardly at the corner of the table. 

“Oh shit- sorry,” Bill shouts, apology thrown Patty’s way who is bent over digging through jars of baby food. “Wait!”

Everyone pauses in their movements, shuffling and settling into seats giving way to an unsure stillness. Bill scampers across the room to go digging through a cooler. 

“We have to toast!” He stands up from his crouch holding a bottle. At first glance, it looks like a champagne bottle, but as he approaches the table Richie can see the large Welch’s logo. It’s sparkling grape juice. 

Bill cycles around the table pouring into the cutesy mismatched plastic cups that the kitchen was stocked with. And Richie thinks. Is it for him? Did the losers stop having alcohol at events on his behalf? The thought makes something unpleasant tickle over his skin.

His child-sized Crayola green cup gets a splash of juice and Bill returns to his awkward corner seat. 

“Richie said it best last time.” He lifts his cup in front of him but thankfully doesn’t look at Richie expectantly for him to fill the blanks. “Another year has passed since we murdered a nightmare clown from space.”

The table laughs, all eyes on Bill, their irreplaceable leader. Audra sits next to him, one arm looped around his waist and the other holding her bright orange cup. She’s smiling like this is all old news. 

Bill delivers an all-in-all pretty brief speech about growing families and surviving and finding happiness together. By the end of it, when he’s telling them all that he loves them, his voice is cracking and his eyes are watering.

“You fucking crybaby,” Richie says, also crying. 

“Jesus,” Eddie sighs. He shakes out a napkin to press into Richie’s face. “I’m surrounded by criers.”

“All dry over here!” Beverly raises her hand in the middle of piling rice into a bowl. 

“With Ben around?” Richie sniffles. “Not fuckin’ likely.”

Beverly nods and shrugs as if to say _‘good point’_. Ben actually blushes, which is just… so annoyingly adorable. 

“I love you Losers,” Bill says happily. 

Everyone at the table echoes the love loudly, just like they always have. 

xxxx 

It only takes a day for Richie to fall into a pre-melancholy that this reunion with the Losers is only a week and a half long. The way he’s heard people talk about the _Sunday Blues_ before a new week of work starts up, but like if you got Sunday Blues on Friday afternoon, sad about leaving them behind again well before he has to. 

The downstairs is a wild hustle and bustle of people maneuvering around each other between the kitchen and the living room, sitting, standing, cooking.

“Rich!” Eddie’s at the stove, scrambling and frying. “Eggs?”

“No thanks!” he calls back over the noise.

He finds Ben in the living room, looking at something Richie can’t see with his big sad Ben eyes. As he moves farther into the room, he can trail the look over to Beverly, standing in front of a huge picture window holding Andy. She’s still in soft pajamas, her short hair pulled back into a lazy bun. 

“Bev, you’re up!” Eddie shouts across the house. He sounds like he might be aiming for short order cook but it comes out more like Bossy New Yorker, Richie respects the effort though. 

She turns around and spots Richie first. “Wanna feed her?”

Richie stutters and stumbles for too long, gives Beverly too much room to come over and plop a baby into his arms. It’s extremely nerve wracking, she’s able to hold her own head up but still seems so tiny and fragile in his arms. 

“Like this.” Beverly maneuvers his arm for him so Andy is laying against his chest. “So she can hear your heartbeat.”

A bottle gets pressed into his other hand and Beverly vanishes, leaving him on the trapeze with no safety net. 

Andy looks at him, eyes wide and bright, and flaps an arm. He sits very slowly and tenderly on the couch, where she takes her bottle happily. If Ben (or anyone else) sees him getting misty-eyed while looking at her, they don’t say anything. He thinks they would get it, anyway. Stan almost never got to have this, and he looks so happy now that he does. And Andy, aside from being obviously adorable, looks just like him. Her hair is barely there and wispy, but shows the hints of incoming curls, bouncy and wild if they’re anything like Stan’s. 

Eddie eventually trails into the room, mid-conversation with Bill. His steps stutter when his eyes find Richie, just briefly, before he continues seamlessly to sit next to him. Ted squished between them, torn between begging Eddie for food and staring up at Andy, concerned about this strange new _thing_ in Richie’s arms. 

“You have to burp her,” Eddie says after Andy has mostly finished her bottle. 

Richie feels like a deer caught in headlights. “How?”

“I dunno.” Eddie shrugs. “I just heard it before.”

“Just-“ Stan speaks up from where he’s watching with a keen eye. He motions a roll of his arm, miming like he has a baby held against one shoulder. “Support her butt, pat her back.”

He does, patting very very lightly. She feels so tiny and fragile under his hand. 

“You need to pat harder than that.” Stan is obviously trying not to laugh. “She won’t break.”

“If your kid pukes on me, I’m gonna puke on you,” Richie warns.

“She won’t!” Stan assures him. “Probably.”

——

Most of their day is spent lazily, lounging and splitting off into different groups together. Richie lingers at the pool’s edge for a while before he ditches, falling back inside the house to where Bill and Audra are watching Looney Tunes all alone, curled up together. They pull Richie into their little pile like it’s nothing.

Mike wanders between the groups at some point, trying to gauge interest in an excursion. There isn’t much, but there’s ice cream, mini golf, whatever.

Everyone is too cozy, though. Too comfortable and lazy and sedentary to want to go out. It’s nice enough to just bask in the presence of everyone being there without needing to incorporate _activities_ into the mix. 

Richie falls asleep in the accidental way of school summer vacations and, apparently, old man afternoons. He’d slowly collapsed until his head was in Bill’s lap, surprised when Bill dropped an idle hand into his hair without breaking his flow of conversation with Audra.

He wakes up alone on the couch, lights dimmed and TV turned off. It’s not hard to find everyone, he follows the faint sound of chatter all the way outside. 

Everyone’s there, lying back in lounge chairs, floating in the pool, sitting all the edge with their feet in. All just talking and lounging. 

“There he is!” Audra catches him first and waves him over. “We were just wondering if we'd have to come get you.”

“I’m here,” he mumbles, voice sleepy lazy. He wanders like a magnet to Eddie’s side, squishing so they’re awkwardly smushed into a lounge chair together that is decidedly not built for two. He lays there like that for a long time, listening to everyone talking around him. 

Stan has Andy, sleeping and drooling against his chest, looking completely unbothered where he’s sitting and laughing with Ben, Bill, and Audra. Patty and Bev are in the pool, talking to Mike sitting along the edge with a book pushed well out of the splash zone. Eddie joins in with their conversation here and there, his voice rumbling behind Richie threatening to put him back to sleep. 

“Anyone wanna smoke?” Eddie asks the group at large after a while. One hand absently twists a strand of Richie’s hair around and around. “I have weed upstairs.”

Richie’s eyes bug and he turns so sharply to look at Eddie it risks a crick in his neck. 

“What?” Eddie asks, bewildered. 

He has to swallow back every gut reaction and not think about _Eddie_ having _weed_. Eddie wouldn’t even look at a cashew at the Jade, it just doesn’t add up, but he guesses a lot can change in a few years. 

_Play it off, Tozier, think._

“You…” He shifts away from shocked into confused. “You remembered weed but forgot your razor?”

Patty laughs loud again, just like she had yesterday. Everyone chuckles, but her laugh is practically a shout. It’s a stark difference to the reserved quiet of Stan. Like they balance each other. 

——

It’s Eddie and Ben that he ends up with on the enclosed little porch in the dark. Watching entranced as Eddie expertly rolls a joint by the light of the triple-wicked mosquito-repelling candle that Eddie insisted on (despite, again, the whole _enclosed_ porch thing). 

It gets passed between the three of them, starting in various slouched positions across and on the floor in front of the small outdoor couch. Richie and Eddie end up melted together close, side to side, and Ben lays out on the plush carpet on the ground with his eyes closed. He raises a hand when prompted and to pass the joint along, but doesn’t otherwise move. 

“Question.” Richie announces. Eddie shifts minutely against him. “How do bees make honey?”

“It’s like, a byproduct, I think,” Eddie says. “Like I think it’s something they do to nectar with their saliva.”

“It’s _bee spit_?!” Richie tries not to choke on the smoke in his lungs and embarrass himself by coughing. 

He watches the pull of Eddie’s cheeks as he takes another slow drag. 

“Yeah.” Eddie chimneys his smoke straight up into the air. 

“I thought it was like, poop,” Richie says. “Like silk.”

“Silk isn’t poop.” Eddie’s wide eyes are glassy and dancing with laughter. “What the fuck, why would silk be poop?”

“It’s like!” Richie flounders, gesturing in front of himself. “Poop!”

Eddie sinks into the back of the couch laughing. 

“Ben.” Richie kicks out at the bottom of Ben’s shoe and his foot weeble-wobbles back and forth. It’s not even completely clear if Ben is awake or not. “Weigh in, dude, is silk poop?”

“Shut up.” Ben’s voice is as gentle as it always is. “I’m thinking about cows.”

Eddie slings am arm over his face, sent off into an entirely new fit of laughter. 

“What cows?” Richie asks. “Who the fuck was talking about cows?”

“You know those cows in Norway?” Ben asks, like everyone just knows these exact cows. He finally opens his eyes to blink up at them. “They’re all happy to go outside after the winter?”

“Okay?” Richie prompts. 

“They’re cute,” Ben replies. 

“Oh my god.” Richie kicks Ben’s shoe again. “You’re such a lameoid, why’d we invite you and not Bev?”

“I’m an honorary gay!” Ben shouts. “‘Sides, Bev can’t smoke, s’pregnant.”

His words hang in the air for a long time, everyone involved in the conversation operating on dulled reaction time, still holding onto lingering giggles about Norwegian cows. 

Then they hit everyone at once. 

Richie and Eddie are screeching in the same instant that Ben sits up, eyes wide, yelling _‘don’t tell her I told you!’_

“Aw man.” Ben flops back to the carpet, face in his hands. “It was supposed to be a surprise.”

“Ben what the fuck!” Eddie leans so far over in his seat he’s folded in half to whisper down at Ben. “That’s awesome!”

The smile that grows across Ben’s face is gradual, fighting it at first so it comes out crooked before it blooms, full and wide stretching up to his happy eyes. He looks as close to genuinely awestruck as Richie has seen another human look. Like even he still can’t believe the news he's delivering himself. 

“Don’t tell the others yet.” Ben earnest-eyes at them from the floor. “She wants to do a whole reveal.”

“Yeah, sure,” Richie says. Eddie nods like a bobble head next to him. “Congrats, dude.”

——

That night, with the sound of the ocean rolling like far off thunder through their open windows, Richie falls asleep under the warmth of the duvet wrapped around Eddie. Feeling comfortable and weightless and in love. 

xxxx

The week really does melt away around them. 

Ben and Beverly tell the Losers about her pregnancy the morning after the weed and get cycled around endlessly from person to person for tighter and warmer hugs. Eddie and Richie both act convincingly surprised, Richie thinks, but Beverly smiles at them and and comments on their shoddy acting skills. She later admits that Ben had confessed to her that he let it slip by accident because he can’t keep secrets from her. 

Eddie drags Ben and Laika out running a few mornings he can manage to motivate them, but they’re not often gone for very long. Mike laughs and calls him a pervert for very conspicuously waiting at the poolside for them to get back, when Eddie will dive into the pool for a quick cool off. Which, maybe, yeah, but if he’s not allowed to perv over a person he’s married to then really what’s the point? 

Everyone goes to mini golf one afternoon after Bill and Stan announce that if they spend one more minute lazily slouching between the pool and the house they will lose their minds. It’s more fun than Richie remembers any game of mini golf ever being before.

Bill and Eddie get into an argument over who is doing worse even though no one else is keeping score. It devolves into name calling in front of a family with children just trying to have a day out together, but Richie laughing himself to tears and Audra pulling out her phone to record them stops them before they resort to hair pulling. 

Ben wins, as much as anyone can _win_ mini golf, as the only Loser who made a hole in one at any point and maintained his composure the entire time. Even if that meant acting like he didn’t know the others when they were acting like idiots. 

xxxx

Mike learns that there’s a memorial for the Wright brothers at the site of their first flight and a group of them go together to go see it. Eddie stays in, which is fine, Patty and Bill go with them. An odd little group of Losers looking to see a historical monument. 

It’s a small spot surrounded by grass and sand. It’s fairly interesting on its own, but becomes doubly so with all of Mike’s supplemental information. 

Mike would make a great history teacher, Richie thinks. History was always more interesting to him when it was talked about like stories, told as if the person telling it lived through it themselves and the participants were real people. So often the classes he had in high school were dry listings of timelines and dates and so many names he couldn’t keep them straight. 

Mike tells them a story he read about one of the brothers’ many early failures that has them all laughing so hard they’re bent over double while they’re walking around. 

They go get ice cream after, some frighteningly oversized cones that will statistically wreak havoc on some of their digestive systems. But, like, ice cream. 

Patty briefly entertains the idea of buying a second cone for Stan, but everyone comes to a shouting shit-talking agreement that ice cream is only for people who go to historical locations first.

xxxx

Beverly convinces Richie into taking a stroll in the sand late in the afternoon of their last day there, just the two of them. He jokes and jabs at Ben that they’re running away together, that they’ve always been in love with each other, but he’s welcome to join them for a steamy three way anytime he wants. Bev laughs behind him, loud and full. 

“In your dreams, Tozier.” She shoves at his arm, pushing herself off balance more than him, but he doesn’t call her out on it. 

“Yeah, actually!” Richie agrees. “I had this one dream once where _Ben_ -“ He waggles his eyebrows across the room and watches Ben’s ears turn red. 

There is no dream to flow into, no lurid details for him to drag out to expose the horny theater of his mindscape for real, but he’s never been one to shy away from a heavy dose of creative embellishment. He can come up with something particularly nasty, just like he always had. Just like when he was an idiot 15-year-old bragging to his friends about all the boobs he’d been touching before he’d ever even seen a boob in real life. 

Looking back, though, they might not have bought it as easily as he’d thought. 

He’s stopped from telling his stories this time, too, by Beverly hooking her arm through his and pulling him out the door. They walk for a while in the dry burning sand up on the shore, Beverly pointing out where some of the natural dunes were wiped flat by the last hurricane to come through and the elaborate stick-based structures people have constructed to help rebuild the dunes over time. 

They gradually move to the cooler wetter sand when their feet start to burn, letting the waves crash down around their ankles. Bev muses over her regret that they haven’t seen any wild horses all week, even though seeing them would mean waking up at like four in the morning. They’re pretty, she says, but they’re not _that_ pretty. 

They’ve walked for long enough that their big bright blue house is no longer visible behind them, falling hidden behind the peaks of the other houses and the hillsides and the long wispy grasses swaying in the breeze. Beverly bumps her shoulder into his arm when their conversation hits a natural lull.

She’s smiling like she’s up to something when he catches her eye.

“What?” He asks, feeling strangely tense. “Did you bring me out here to kill me or something? Is this why Eddie was asking about life insurance?”

Her laugh has always had such a bounce to it, he can remember from when they were kids. He always liked her laugh, it made him kind of feel like he understood the way Bill looked at her back then. He admired the devilish shine in her eyes then, and he admires it now. 

“You’d better have life insurance, Richie.” 

“Yeah, Yeah.” Richie waves a hand between them. “Why are you looking at me like you know a secret?”

“‘Cause I do know a secret,” she says. 

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah.” Beverly grabs Richie’s hand in hers and twines their fingers together tight. “Ben and I thought about it for a long time. We want you and Eddie to be godfathers.”

For a moment the only thing in Richie’s head is the sounds of the waves crashing against the shore and washing up to their bare feet. 

“What?” he asks, stunned. 

“I mean, in name, mostly,” she clarifies. “We probably won’t do the whole baptism thing, we just want you guys to be, you know, key figures.”

Richie thinks of the argument he and Eddie had in front of everyone yesterday when he tried to eat some food after he dropped it on the floor.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, we’re sure,” Beverly insists. “Lumps and all.”

“Why, uh-“ There’s no not-stupid way to ask. “Why us? I don’t know kid stuff.”

“You don’t have to raise the kid.” She kicks out one foot with a flick to dislodge a bit of seaweed from her toes. “You just, you know, be there when they need you.”

He doesn’t say anything, but his expression must reveal a lot more than he thinks it does, because Beverly tuts at him and jabs him in the side, still holding his hand tight. 

“You have more to offer a kid than you might think,” she says. “Aside from being the cool gay uncle.”

That doesn’t seem possibly true. 

“I’m not cool.” Richie has been many, many things for the past four decades of his life, but cool has never been one of those. 

“You’re in cartoons,” Beverly says in her _‘duh’_ voice. “The kid will think that’s cool.”

She doesn’t let go of his hand when she veers off course. They’ve meandered long enough that the portion of the beach they’re at is mostly deserted, most people flocking farther down toward the more touristy spots. They sit in the sand together melded side by side, staring out at the horizon. 

“It’s nice to have someone other than your lame parents to turn to with problems.” Bev buries her toes into the sand in front of them, they both watch the grains cascade down the tiny mountains she creates. “You have a unique history to pull some knowledge from.”

“I’ve fucked up a lot.” It’s true, he knows it is, she knows it is. He can hardly remember a time when he wasn’t fucking up. He wonders how it’s possible for a guy who has fucked up as much as he has to have a life like this. _if_ it’s possible. 

Beverly drops her head to his shoulder, swiping one hand quickly across her head to remove some stray hairs from her face. “I wouldn’t say it like that.”

“How would you say it?”

The waves crash far ahead of them, Richie watches a group of sandpipers playing their frantic little game of running back and forth. They remind him of Eddie, small and scurrying and curious. 

“You’ve been through tough times and come out on the other side,” Beverly says. She shifts again so her cheek is mashed against his shoulder. “That doesn’t happen without a little wisdom seeping in, even to someone as stubborn as you.”

Richie leans back against Bev, rests his own cheek on top of her head. He has to move the same flyaway hairs she’d flicked away when the wind blows them up and they tickle against his nose. 

“I guess so.” He has to restrain himself from shrugging. 

“Remember when you had a seizure?” 

“Uh.” Richie has never had a seizure in his life. Not according to his medical history, at least, his memory is still pretty shaky on a bunch of childhood details. 

“Well, no, I guess your memory of being blacked out would be fuzzy.” She unknowingly saves him from the awkward moment of needing to confess he has no idea what she’s referencing. “You had a scary thing happen and you turned your life around because of it.

“Resilience, I guess.” She nods, like this is the exact word she was looking for. “Yeah. You saved yourself. That’s a good influence to have around.”

The entire thing sounds to Richie like she’s talking about a completely different person. Richie hasn’t done anything to save himself. The only direction he’s turned his life is directly toward the ground. 

He snorts. “If you think that kid’s DNA isn’t gonna be fuckin’ stacked with resilience between you and Ben, I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention.” Talk about people who have saved themselves. Beverly has saved her own life multiple times when everyone around her failed to help.

She laughs, a twinkling chime. “A little more won’t hurt.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah?” She stirs, brings their still-intertwined hands to her lips to press a kiss to the back of his hand. 

“Yeah.” He returns her kiss, right against the crown of her head. He misses her so much, even with her right there. “Of course.”

They’re almost back to the house when Richie asks how she’s been feeling. She reports back that she’s not puking anymore, but it’s still too early to feel the baby moving. He looks, but she’s wearing a flowy sweater thing that drapes and shows nothing. 

She presses his hand over her belly at the bottom of the stairs outside of the house. There’s a barely noticeable bump, her stomach soft and warm to touch. He nicknames the baby Big Lunch, and by the evening the nickname has caught on with everyone else in the house. 

xxxx

Going home the next afternoon isn’t easy. The day is rough from the very start, Bill and Audra announcing right after breakfast that they need to be going already. Richie isn’t the only one with damp eyes saying bye to them both, which is comforting. His love for these people is incapacitating, but it looks like they all feel the same way. 

“How did ten days go so fast?” Stan wonders when the door clicks shut after them. 

“It always does,” Mike answers. 

They leave at almost the same time as Mike, though they head off in different directions, with Richie and Eddie heading north to the nearest airport. The road trip was nice, but not exactly an experience they are desperate to relive so soon. 

So they’re home that very same night and they didn’t even have to step foot in LAX, so neither of them want to murder the other. 

Ted pees on the floor, like, the second they step foot back into their cute little Palm Springs house. After a week in a wildly oversized beach house, coming back feels snug and cozy and close in comparison. Eddie gasps and calls him _Theodore_ before scampering not unlike the sandpipers from yesterday to the kitchen for paper towels.

“Shit, these are all we have.” Eddie makes a face at the rapidly soaking towels on the floor, folding them over between pinched fingers like he doesn’t want to touch them. 

“Under the sink?” Richie’s wheeling past him with two large suitcases, plus a backpack, plus an oversized shoulder bag.

“No, I checked. Could you run to the store?” Eddie asks. “Two seconds, we just need some paper towels.”

Richie stretches his back out with a series of loud satisfying pops from where he was bent over dropping his mule-load of bags. “Yeah, okay,” he grunts. “You get to do all the unpacking.”

“Ha ha.” Eddie reaches out, snags the sleeve of Richie’s button-up in his fingers as he passes. “You get to clean up when Ted pees on the floor again.”

Ted has still not calmed down about being home, running from room to room sniffing everything. It’s not entirely unlikely to happen. 

“Fair trade,” Richie concedes.

Eddie doesn’t let him go. Tugs him closer and rises to his toes to kiss him sweetly. 

“Fair trade.” He echoes his words as confirmation, smiling them against Richie’s lips, noses smushing with how closely they’re pressed together. 

Richie kisses him one more time and steps away. 

“I’ll kiss you more when I get back,” he says. “Ted really is gonna pee inside again and you’ll kill me if I use a bath towel.”

“I’ll hold you to that!” Eddie shouts after him as he closes the front door with his exit. 

Richie walks to the little corner store. The desert evening is cool and dry and their neighborhood is nice and quiet. It’s peaceful. He misses the Losers already, but it feels good to be home again. And it is. Home. It feels like it now. 

The bell above the door jangles and the disinterested twenty-something at the register barely glances up for long enough to see Richie’s greeting nod. He trails along the aisles, searching, until he turns the bend to see a familiar figure staring into the ice cream cartons steadily. Green bowler hat and everything. 

“Hello, Richie,” the old man says. 

“What do you want?” Richie asks, less than kindly. “Here to tell me I’m about to make a terrible mistake buying off-brand?”

“It’s time,” he says. 

Richie refuses to know what he’s talking about. He isn’t ignoring it or being obtuse, he just… refuses. His jaw clenches hard, painfully grinding his teeth. “Time for what?”

“Time to go back.”

“No.” Richie’s hands shake at his sides, sweaty. He shoves them into the pockets of his shorts just to keep them still. His mouth is dry. “No, I don’t want to.”

His breath skips and picks up in a way that he belatedly realizes means he’s about to cry. There’s nothing he can do to stop it. 

“I’m not ready.” His voice wobbles all over the place, high and cracking. His breath hitches, almost a hiccup. “Just-“

“Richie.” The old man has pity in his voice. Normally pity would hit like a punch, but this time he takes it. If he’s pitiful enough, maybe he can catch a break. Just once in his life. 

“J-just one more night,” he tries to bargain, but he’s already blubbering. He sniffles, loud and disgusting. “Just to say goodbye. _Please_.”

He hadn't even said bye to leave for the store. He’d left on a joke about their dog peeing on the floor. He needs to tell Eddie he loves him, doesn’t know that he’ll ever get the chance again. 

“It’s easier this way.” The old man removes his hat and holds it in front of him, posture solemn. “Like a Band-Aid.”

“Easier?!” He finally has to rip his hands back out of his pockets to wipe roughly at his damp face. He gestures up and down at himself. “How is _this_ easier?”

“You can have this, Richie-“

“I DO-“ He catches himself yelling, his eyes dart back to the bored cashier who is trying very hard to look like they’re not listening. He lowers his voice to a hiss. “I _do_ have this. _you’re_ the one taking it away.”

“You knew-“

 _“No_.” If he’s entirely honest, Richie is surprised that he actually stops the old man short. “Fuck that, I won’t go back. I’m going home to Eddie-“ he drags the bottom of his stupidly patterned shirt across his face like it will magically make him look presentable and not snot-covered. “-To my dog. You can’t stop me.”

His eyes don’t stop leaking, but his pathetic warbling is replaced with furious determination. He won’t leave Eddie. It doesn’t matter that it’s not real, it _feels_ real. 

He drops the roll of off-brand paper towels back onto the shelf and storms off. He at least stops at the shitty coffee station and wrenches a handful of rough sandpaper napkins from the dispenser to have instead, pretending the entire time like the single employee of the place isn’t watching him warily. 

The bell jingles cheerily again at his exit and he trips over himself when he steps through the door. 

Only tripping isn’t exactly right, either. 

He gets that sharp plummet in his gut, the shock of his heartbeat picking up its pace. His body isn’t hurtling toward the ground, though, he’s sure of that. 

It’s an instant and then he’s gasping awake in bed. His heart is still racing, like it does in those strange times when, on the precipice of sleep, his body jolts awake for no reason. Disproportionately embarrassing for how very alone he is sleeping. 

He’s in LA. In his shitty K-town apartment. In agonizing pain. 

Before Palm Springs, the pain of a hangover melding into the dizzying discomfort of a new drunk became so routine he’d kind of stopped noticing it altogether. Now, after a month without it, his body feels like it’s been steamrolled and left in a landfill. He’s scrambling before he can react to his situation, too long legs hurtling toward the bathroom as he tries to stop himself from hurling everywhere before he can make it. 

He does make it, but that doesn’t do too much to stop the situation from sucking ass. 

His head throbs, his ears ring, and his stomach lurches every time he dares to open his eyes even in the dark of his windowless bathroom. He takes the cool porcelain of the toilet as his only relief until his body runs out of anything to reject. 

“Fuck.”

He wakes up with his face pressed against the toilet seat, unable to tell how much time has passed, feeling like the great slime that death forgot. 

He wants nothing more than to leave and hunt down that bowler hat-wearing fucker. And then… he doesn’t know what. But something. Whatever it would take to go back. 

However he has never been more aware in his life that he’s currently barely capable of taking two entire steps. His legs are shaking so badly he’s not sure he can stand. He wants to cry, but he’s so dehydrated the tears don’t come along with his nauseated sobs. 

Hours pass in this way, alternating sleeping and dry heaving and dry sobbing and sleeping again. 

There’s a part of him with a month’s long habit of embracing the hair of the dog approach that wants to drag his feeble body out to his kitchen and drink whatever he can get his hands on. A bigger part of him wants to wink out of existence entirely. 

An indeterminate amount of time passes on the bathroom floor. If he had to guess, millennia, by the feel of things. 

A phone rings somewhere. He knows it’s his because the ringtone is The Macarena. It stops and restarts four times in a row. The only person who calls him is Adam. 

It takes another millennia and three more phone calls for him to drag his useless shitty body back to his room and find his phone under his bed. 

“What?” He answers just to stop the song playing again. 

“Hi, Richie.” He winces, has to pull the phone several inches away from his ear so he can stop seeing stars. “I’m good, thanks, how are you?”

“Fine.” He’s sitting up which is fine by his most recent standards. 

“Fine enough for Santa Barbara this weekend?” Adam asks. 

The thought of going to Santa Barbara and getting on a stage and telling the stupid fucking jokes that he hates and make him hate himself makes him want to curl up into a ball and die. 

“No.” 

His sitting up position is mostly supported by the side of his bed, his face mashed into the bundle of his comforter. He can’t remember the last time he fucked someone in this bed but he knows these sheets aren’t clean. 

“Sorry?” Adam sounds surprised. Good. 

“No,” Richie repeats. “I don’t want to go to Santa Barbara or anywhere else.”

“Okay?” Adam replies. “That’s gonna make a standup career pretty difficult.”

“I don’t care.“ Richie hitches, wobbles, but he’s been set off like a whole pile of fireworks and there’s no way to make him stop. “I don’t fucking care. I’m sick of telling shitty jokes, I’m sick of lying, I’m sick of you calling me and telling me where to be.”

Richie’s throat is sore and his voice is rough from hours of being sick, talking so much makes him gag again. 

“Are you… quitting?” Adam asks, unsure, tentative, disbelieving. 

“I guess so.” He breathes, in the nose, out the mouth, he can make it through his nausea. “Who cares.”

“Richie, are you okay?” He sounds completely out of his depth in asking, has never before shown interest in his well being. 

“Fuck off, man.” He’s hanging up before Adam can say anything else, and he turns his phone off before he can call back. 

Forty minutes later, Richie passes out. He doesn’t remember it when he comes to, but he’s on the floor and disoriented beyond what he had been the rest of his day. His entire brain hurts like it’s splitting open. 

With weak hands he turns his phone back on, calling Adam back with a shaky press of fingers. 

“Richie?” He sounds out of breath. 

“I think I’m dying,” he mumbles. 

“I’m already on the way,” Adam says. “Stay on the phone.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> o richie tozier we're really in it now


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to everyone who was patient with me whining about this chapter & to nntkiwff for the insights & to IfItHollers as always for the hyphens and the grouchy Richie help   
> also thank you to this chapter and what it did to my targeted ads
> 
> detailed (mild) cw in end notes, just for the sake of caution

Adam drives him to the emergency room. It’s not _that_ far away, but it is Los Angeles, so getting there is still impossibly difficult. Not that Richie is paying attention to traffic patterns. Richie is slumped in the passenger seat with his arm draped over his eyes hoping that blocking out the light will stop the supernova pain in his head. No luck so far but he’s holding onto some frail threads of hope. 

Everything happens around him and to him without a need to actively participate, which is ideal anyway because his brain feels like a smoothie. An IV gets shoved into his arm, Adam answers a bunch of questions for him, he fades in and out of being fully aware of his surroundings.

He hears snippets of conversation. One voice saying ' _he was disoriented and twitching_ ', another saying ' _confusion, light sensitivity…_ '. He wants to ask questions of his own, but he can’t find the way to make the words come out of his mouth. 

When he comes back around, he feels significantly less like he’s on the verge of death. Adam is sitting next to his bed in an uncomfortable looking chair, scrolling on his phone. 

“Didn’t I fire you?” 

Adam starts so suddenly he fumbles his phone, clapping it against his leg before it can hit the ground. 

“Richie!” He stands up, takes a half step, sits back down. “Jesus, dude.”

When Richie says nothing in response, simply stares with squinting eyes (even the dim lights hurt, _and_ his glasses are gone) Adam shifts. 

“You did,” he confirms. “But, believe it or not, I care whether you live or die independent to your willingness to make me money.”

That doesn’t sound like Adam, but what the fuck does Richie know. 

“Am I?” He asks. 

“Dying?” Richie nods, but it’s a nauseating motion so he closes his eyes. “No, you’re not dying.”

If what he’d experienced in his apartment was not dying he can’t imagine how bad death must really be. Or maybe it’s the reverse, maybe dying happens in an instant, followed by empty bliss. Don’t the French call something small death? It’s either orgasms or sneezes, he can’t remember which. He has a gut instinct to call and ask Mike before he remembers he hasn’t spoken to Mike in months here. For all he knows the number he has for Mike is outdated. 

“I knew you were hitting the bottle again, Richie.” Adam’s voice makes him want to roll his eyes, but if he does he’ll vomit again, he knows it. “But I didn’t know it was this bad.”

“Bullshit.” God, his mouth tastes like hot dumpster and his teeth feel coated. He stops moving his tongue to avoid experiencing any of it.

He wants desperately to get angry, to make Adam angry back. He can’t identify why, it thrums hot under his skin, but it doesn’t escape. He doesn’t have the energy for it. He’s weak and trembling, and only just coming aware that he’s sweating all over, covered in a layer of _damp_ that’s soaking into his clothes and the starchy sheets around him. 

“How would I know?” Adam sounds frustrated. Borderline outraged. “You showed up when you were supposed to, did your sets, acted normal.”

Had he? Acted normal? Has anything been normal since Derry?

“Mr. Tozier,” a doctor interrupts before he can ask. She’s tall and thin with a great deal of large curly hair pulled back into some kind of tie. “Good to see you up, how are you feeling?”

“Like a newborn deer,” Richie says. 

“Do you mind answering a few questions?” She's polite, professional, distant. 

“Uh.” His eyes flick to Adam and back to the doctor. “Sure.”

She introduces herself as Kari before running through a list of questions, do you know where you are, the year, who this man is… until she really narrows into her destination. How many times in a typical week do you drink? Has anyone ever asked you to cut down? Do questions about your drinking annoy you? (A lot, probably, yes he’s annoyed _right now_ )

“When is the last time you had a drink?” She asks him finally. 

He hesitates, a whole month of memories between meeting the man in a bowler hat and now, but that month hadn’t really happened, he’s right back where he left off. 

“Yesterday? The day before?” He doesn’t know how long it’s been since he woke up, how much time he spent in his bathroom. It feels like an admission, especially with Adam right next to him. He looks concerned, but Richie knows he’s judging him. Thinking about how pathetic he is, an idiot who can’t take care of himself. 

He misses Eddie. Eddie who saw him vomiting in their cute little bathroom and told him he was proud of him and held him and made fun of movies with him. 

“Your symptoms are quite typical for alcohol withdrawal,” she explains. “We’d like to admit you and get your dehydration taken care of.”

“I’ve had hangovers,” Richie asserts. “This isn’t a withdrawal thing.”

He’s shaking like a shitty little chihuahua and _pouring_ sweat. His headache is better, but only in that he can mostly manage to think a thought in his head from beginning to end without losing it along the way. 

“Anxiety attacks are common in the first few days of withdrawal,” the doctor tells him. “It’s not unusual to think an attack is something far worse. In cases of extended use, treatment takes more than a simple drying up, and going without is at serious risk to your health.

You most likely had a seizure, which happens in almost a quarter of withdrawal patients, but we’ll need to hook you up to an EEG overnight to confirm.”

Every word she says after ' _seizure_ ' is static in his ears. 

' _remember when you had a seizure?'_ Beverly had asked

\----

Richie gets placed into an actual room, in a starchy sheeted uncomfortable bed and a curtain on a track that separates him from a neighboring bed. It’s empty when he gets in, but there are signs of it being used. They pull the curtain, he doesn’t care who’s in the other bed, he just wants to shake and sweat in peace. 

Adam sits in his room for a few hours, alternating looking at his phone and refilling Richie’s water cup when he empties it. It all seems futile, like as soon as he gets the water in him it’s leaking out through his pores and into the bed like he’s an oversaturated sponge. But as soaking as he is, his mouth is dry and tacky and his thirst won’t quench no matter how much he drinks.

“Are you just here to watch me sweating or what?” Richie snipes eventually, when the silence weighs in too heavy on his ears. 

“Thought you could use the company,” Adam replied coolly. “Do you want to be left alone?”

Richie stares at him, blinks, gaping. No part of him feels steady enough even to question what the fuck Adam is talking about. He has _other clients_ as he is so quick to remind Richie every time he doesn’t want to do something or gets a little too snappy about needing him _now_. There’s no reason for him to still be here in the hospital with Richie.

“Actually-” Adam stands and Richie knows this is it. He fired him, told him to fuck off and then begged for a ride to the hospital like a moron. Adam’s going to do the same, tell him to go fuck himself and go off to his other clients who _appreciate him_. “You should try to sleep, I’m gonna stop by your place and grab some clothes.”

Richie gapes even harder. “What?”

“You’re drenched in sweat, dude.” Adam waves a hand sort of in Richie’s direction. “I figure you’ll want a change.”

Adam leaves Richie in a foul mood, unable to sleep and up to his ears in nausea. He’s thrumming with a low-grade anger like a sunburn. Not the kind that blisters and aches and keeps your shoulders from moving, but the type that’s slow and gradual and you don’t even know is there until you step into the shower. 

It simmers around him so slowly he doesn’t realize it’s coming to a boil.

It’s just… how fucking dare Adam not be exactly what Richie has always had painted in his mind. It’s inconsiderate, is what it is, Adam casually going around subverting expectations by being nice and caring and bringing Richie fresh clothes. Richie has never subverted an expectation in his life, it’s the proper thing to do.

He must sleep, eventually, or he just blacks out from the delirium, it’s impossible to tell. When he opens his eyes again the chair Adam was in is still empty, but a duffel bag he recognizes from his apartment is on the floor next to it.

In the morning, probes still stuck on his head and barely any sleep grabbed through the night, he gets his confirmation. He had a seizure. It doesn’t seem real.

xxxx

Doctor Kari tells him that he’s lucky he’s managed to avoid The DTs, but he doesn’t have the cell service to google what that stands for. By the sounds of her tone of voice, he doesn’t think he wants to know what exactly he’s missing out on anyway.

She suggests a rehab facility to him the afternoon of his third day in the hospital and, while she doesn’t hand over a high-gloss trifolded pamphlet or anything, she does give him a short stack of hastily printed papers complete with highlighted contact information. The pages are extensively detailed, more so than Richie cares to read over, but he tells her he’ll think about it.

He’s going to be discharged from the hospital. He’s out of immediate danger and there are people out there with more urgent needs than a man whose hangover headache has melded seamlessly into an insomnia one. He won’t die from a headache and he’s not sweating like he’s getting paid by the gallon anymore, so no doubt they’re sending him home. 

It feels… kind of like an accomplishment in a weird way. He hasn’t had a drink in three days and has even consumed real actual solid food and kept it down. His hands still shake when he uses his phone to play his 600th game of solitaire when he still can’t fall asleep, and he can only really fill his tiny flimsy plastic cup halfway or he’ll splash it all over himself and his bed. It’s easy to think _’well I’m fixed now!’_ and prepare to go home as if everything has changed. As if being locked inside a hospital room with a needle in his hand isn’t the one and only reason he hasn’t had a drink in those three days.

He knows if he goes home today to his apartment that he left a mess, he won’t drink. He doesn’t miss the sick, dizzy, spinning feeling in his head or his swimming vision. He hasn’t heard the clown whispering in his ear since he’s been sober. He’s. He’s not _content_ , but the things that he’d connected to his motivations to get as drunk as he could physically withstand now seem smaller.

But he thinks. It’s not easy. He’s exhausted and hungry and his body is aching, but he thinks. After three days at home, five, a week, will he still not be drinking? What else will he be doing instead? He has no job now, he fired Adam officially, he has no friends anymore. His only hobby for the last nine or ten months has been drinking. 

Adam doesn’t come when Richie is discharged, he’s in Santa Barbara with other clients of his who don’t fire him over the phone or call him to say they’re dying after seizures or yell at him in hospital rooms. 

He gets shuttled away alone to Santa Monica in an awkwardly silent car ride to the recovery facility from the printed sheets that he’d been given. 

It’s a surprisingly nice place, more of a house than anything Richie would have mentally associated with the word _facility_. He’d pictured sterile white walls and tile floors and a disinterested staff in mild blue scrubs, but it’s actually… cozy inside. The entry room has a selection of plush chairs and comfortable looking couches, a few of which are occupied by people quietly reading and lounging. Everything is neutral colors, cream or something, he doesn’t know interior design, but he likes the effect of it. 

Claire invites him into a tour of the building. She’s a nurse, she says, and Richie realizes that what he had at first thought were casual clothes are actually something of a uniform. A soft-looking top tucked into a comfortable pair of pants. The only thing that gives it away is the name tag secured to the front of her shirt. He’s shown to a bedroom he’ll be sharing with someone named Anthony according to the cutesy letterboard hanging on the door, but they’re not currently there. He dumps his duffel bag onto the available bed and they continue on.

There’s a garden in the back surrounded by large leafy ferns and with a scattering of benches all throughout. It has a trickling little pond filled with tiny fish at one end, and there are a couple of groups sitting scattered around the space. This is where people most often go when they get visitors, Claire tells him, it’s peaceful.

Their tour wraps at the back of the house in a room that looks much more like one that should be in a _facility_. Sterile white tile and large privacy curtain rods on wheels. 

“Claire!” He lays on the theatrics of his gasp, one palm pressed to his chest. “You tricked me, didn’t you?”

“Well we do like to start with the hospitality before we take your blood from you.” She grins up at him, she’s tiny and friendly with her hair cut short and blunt around her chin. “It only seems polite.”

She points him toward a chair that looks like it was stolen straight from a high school nurse’s office, all peeling plastic cushions and steel legs. Save all the good chairs for the more visible rooms, he guesses. 

“You good with needles?” She asks.

He shrugs, nods. “S’far as I know.”

“No tough guy act.” She points at him with the needle she still hasn’t removed from the sterilized packaging. Her eye contact is fiery and intimidating even with her being a foot shorter than he is. “If you’re going to faint, tell me and I’ll get Liam in here to help me catch.”

He raises his hands, palms out. “No act! I’ve never fainted before.”

Claire hooks him up easily, barely a pinch. She takes a vial, then another, and then one more.

“You planning to clone me or something?” He asks. The vials are small, but three feels excessive.

“One of you seems like more than enough.” She’s smiling, but she doesn’t look up from where she’s putting his blood into a little standing rack. She rolls back over to him on her little stool and instructs him to hold a cotton ball in the crook of his elbow while she disposes of the needle and cleans up the little station. 

“Bicarbonate panel, liver screening, full STI panel,” she lists seamlessly. “Fresh intake stuff, same for everyone.”

Her delivery is oddly comforting in that it’s so routine and thoughtless. It’s deceptive in it feeling like any other doctor’s visit, not that he’s had very many historically because he spent his twenties _and_ thirties mostly thinking ‘ _well if I never go it means I’m healthy_ ’. It’s like his body forgets to launch into a freak out right away, though, or maybe he’s just too tired to fully grasp his situation.

The cotton ball gets taped down to his arm and Claire kicks him out of the room so she can get back to work. She at least has the kindness to laugh when he asks if they were out of Thomas the Tank Engine band-aids. 

He leaves the room with the voice of an anxious preteen rattling off all of the horrible diseases he could have and not realize it. It feels like a voice this branch of his anxiety has always had, only before he’d had no clue there was a face and name to go with it. Nothing has shown up, no rashes or itches or burning or… he hesitates to even continue the line of thinking, seeping or swelling or… he stops himself short, lump in his throat. ‘ _That doesn’t mean anything,_ ’ the voice launches on. ‘ _Just means what you do have isn’t visible yet which is WORSE_.’ Shut the _fuck_ up, voice.

\----

He finally gets to meet Anthony when he heads back to his room, exhausted and knowing he won’t be able to sleep anyway. His name has been added to the letterboard, just slightly off center in a way that’s charming. 

Anthony’s nice enough, short and broad shouldered with brown skin. He doesn’t offer up his life story and he doesn’t ask Richie prying questions about his, which makes him pretty easy to like in Richie’s eyes. He’s about to wrap his first month in the house, Richie wouldn’t have even guessed he had a problem if he’d seen him in public. 

Anthony is younger than Richie by enough years that a number of Richie’s movie references from his teenage years gather the “oh my parents liked that movie”. It’s not mean spirited, but it makes Richie feel like the oldest fuck on planet Earth. 

“Well what movies did you grow up with then?” Richie caves and asks when Anthony, once again, tells him that his parents liked _The Lost Boys_.

“I dunno,” he answers. “ _The Lion King_? _Scream_?”

Richie grumbles. He can’t even tell him the movies he likes are shitty without lying. He still cries watching _The Lion King_. 

“Fine, okay, you win.” He is _not_ pouting even a tiny little bit. 

“Sorry dude!” Anthony has a warm smile, it always hits his eyes. “Anyway I gotta go, therapy time.”

He drops his phone onto his mattress and walks toward the door. Richie stops him before he can fully escape with a quiet ‘ _hey_ ’.

“They really do therapy every day here? Doesn’t that seem like a lot?” He asks.

“It did at first,” Anthony agrees. “I like it though, now, it helps.”

“Guess that’s why they do it.” 

Anthony nods with his warm smile again and disappears out of the room.

Richie sits with a cold pit of dread in his gut. 

xxxx

He meets Dr. Pete on his third morning in the house. He’s a few years older than Richie and he has an inviting smile from the moment Richie walks into his office. There’s a desk in the corner of the room with a laptop sitting open, but Pete is sitting in a plush chair well away from it, he gestures for Richie to sit in an identical one nearby. 

The goals, he explains, of Richie’s first month in the house are to get his body back into balance. Yes, his hospital visit helped his immediate symptoms, but that’s far from the end of his _journey to recovery_. Richie rolls his eyes at the phrase, aware in some distant part of his mind that he’s being a dick, but not really caring much. If Pete notices, he says nothing. 

“Right, first step of fixing a problem is saying you have a problem, which I do.” He points at Pete, raises his eyebrows. See? He can say it, that alone should put him days ahead of where he’s expected to be. “And get my body to balance. So, what, Pedialyte and meditation?”

“Not exactly,” Dr Pete says. “Months of heavy use of a depressant can really do a number on a person’s brain, chemically, and you’ll have a period while the body works to return to normal that may be difficult.”

“Right, my brain is shitty,” Richie remarks. “I could’ve fuckin’ told you that.”

“It’s not shitty, but it might start to feel like it,” Pete answers, unruffled. He leans back in his seat, one ankle raised to rest on the knee of his other leg. “When I was recovering, it was the mood swings that sent me back to drinking more than anything else.”

“You..? Drank?”

The guy’s a _doctor_ and he looks exactly like the type he would have imagined if prompted. Collared shirt, color coordinated tie, neatly trimmed and styled hair. He looks _boring_ and put together, not exactly the type to lean into alcohol to make it through the day.

“Yeah,” Pete confirms. “Drank every day for a while, at first just to unwind from the day, but eventually to start the day, or with lunch, or whenever I could get half a chance. I got caught drinking at work 8 years ago and had a chance to get clean or lose everything. I got clean.”

Eight years. Richie thinks about that purple five year token on his desk in Palm Springs.

“So, what?” Richie looks at Pete, at the shelves behind him, the blue sky out the window. His voice is full of spite. This is a waste of both of their time. “Is this where I’m supposed to spill my guts about how like my mom beat me and shit?”

“Did she?” Pete asks. He doesn’t seem overly interested, not in the way of someone getting hot gossip on a low-tier celebrity, not even in the TV _how does that make you feel_ therapist way. He’s just asking, casual. 

“No,” Richie replies. He’s physically forcing himself to keep his shoulders from rising to his ears, if only so that Pete won’t know how deeply uncomfortable he is. His voice rises where his shoulders don’t, defensive. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“I don’t want you to say anything if you don’t want to.” Pete shifts back in his seat, slouching a little more comfortably. “You can just listen, I can tell you about what to expect here or I can talk about the episode of Suits I watched last night.”

“Really?” Richie asks. He feels a lot like a kid waiting for the catch to reveal itself on a really good deal. “You’ll just talk and I sit here?”

“Sure.” Pete shrugs. “You’re not the first person I’ve met who didn’t want to talk, I’m good at filling silence.”

Pete tells him that, yes, they really are going to be meeting for daily therapy sessions for at least the first month and possibly beyond. He explains further, saying that if Richie is willing to listen (which he is because listening means not talking) he could go on all day about it, that they take this approach because things change rapidly in just a few weeks. They won’t even run through with a diagnosis until his second month because the withdrawal mood swings lead to a mistaken diagnosis so often. 

He’s so cool-headed it’d be irritating from anyone else, a passive aggressive ‘ _it’s fine_ ’ in the middle of an argument, but from Pete it’s just exactly what it seems. He’s calm and collected in the face of a grouchy Richie. 

He isn’t bothered in the slightest when Richie tells him he thinks therapy is stupid and won’t help him in any way. Just says Richie isn’t the first person he’s met who didn’t like the idea of therapy.

Richie has to at least concede when Pete points out that it’s mandatory at the house anyway. It’s not like he has a choice, even if he does think it won’t help him.

It’s about facing the underlying causes of his drinking, which sounds like the exact opposite of the sort of thing Richie wants to partake in. There’s a difference, Pete says, between ‘ _having a drink_ ’ and ‘ _capital-d Drinking_ ’. Richie prickles at the idea of it, of _any_ of those things inside of him coming out in front of Pete, but he doesn’t pick a fight about it.

Pete talks about his most recent episode of _Suits_ and Richie listens.

\----

There’s a post it at his bedside table from Claire asking him to meet her downstairs when he’s free, and while he’s not exactly in the mood for her to stab him with more needles or whatever diabolical things she has planned, it beats sitting around ruminating on everything he’d talked with Pete about. He shuffles down the stairs like a teenager dragging his ass on the way to school and finds Claire in the lounge room putting a stack of books onto a shelf.

“Hey, Richie!” She drops her books onto the shelf in a pile and jerks her head in a _’follow me’_ gesture. She leads him back to her white tile dungeon again. 

“Didn’t you take enough last time?” Richie curls his arms in front of him like he can protect his veins from a tiny bloodthirsty woman. 

“Pop a squat.” She gestures at the same nurse’s office chair from last time. 

He does, and she sits across from him in her wheely stool again. 

“We got the biggest results in, we’re still waiting on some others,” she says. “Nothing drastically unexpected, as far as your liver and chemical levels are concerned.”

Claire stands and starts digging through a drawer at the counter space. She spins back around with a syringe in hand, drawing from a tiny glass vial.

“You have gonorrhea, which should clear up with this shot, but we’ll retest you in a few days, a week, to be sure.” She flicks the syringe, adjusting the amount of serum in the hollow tube.

Her delivery is so dry that it takes him a full second to absorb that she’s just told him he has an STI. He recognizes, with a kind of muted horror as his arm is being sanitized with a little swab, that he shouldn’t be shocked at all. He hadn’t been careful with the guys he’d taken home and he hadn’t cared one bit about what they might have brought with them. With a clearer mind, the realization is a lot to think about. 

“Anything else?” He asks despite the dryness in his throat. All of his teenage years spent paralyzed with fear watching the news about HIV and here he is, because he’d been too drunk and miserable to give a shit about being safe. 

“Nope!” Caire gives him his injection smoothly, just a couple seconds. “No other STIs, that's it.”

“ _Jesus_ ,” Richie says on the heaviest sigh of his life. “And this shot’s gonna stop my dick from falling off or whatever?”

Claire grimaces. “Sex ed classes really let you down, didn’t they?” 

The school system as a whole kind of let him down, but that feels like more of a Pete conversation than a Claire one.

“It’s an antibiotic. It’s not unusual to have no symptoms at first, but if you start to feel any pain, come see me.” She tosses the syringe and rips off her gloves with the stretching sound of latex. “We’ll retest in a couple weeks to be sure you’re all clear.”

xxxx

He starts feeling good after his first few days in the house in Santa Monica. He hits five days (and then six, and a week) without a drink and feels, physically, significantly better than he had not long ago. Pete told him to expect as much, that as the worst of the symptoms pass in people who try to go through their recovery alone, complacency becomes much more of a danger. 

His routine settles when his intake procedures wrap up. This is when the boredom settles in. Not the boredom of having nothing to do, there’s plenty to do, no one has taken his phone away from him and the other residents he’s met so far are friendly and open. Even Claire will entertain his babbling about whatever Wikipedia pages he’s most recently read about when she’s not busy with something else. It’s a weird sort of bone-deep boredom, a loneliness he recognizes from before Derry, only now he knows what’s missing. 

He feels like he’s floating sometimes, like he’s existing and biding time until he’s just allowed back out into the world. 

It makes him itchy under his skin, the sort of insistent prickle of a recently slept on limb getting blood back to it, but everywhere all at once. Agitation, like an animal at the zoo pacing back and forth in front of its enclosure window. 

He’s a dick when someone else in the house introduces himself and asks him questions about his life, and he gets into an argument with Anthony because of the brightness of his phone screen when he can’t sleep at night. He even snaps at Claire when she tells him good morning. He feels guilty, and then idiotic, which makes his mood worse, which makes him even _snappier_. His brain is fucking broken and stuck in this endless loop of being a rude shithead to anyone he encounters. 

Several other residents congratulate him on a week clean and it only makes him want to claw his eyes out. He’s been nothing but an asshole and they’re being polite to him.

“Have you been feeling frustrated?” Pete asks in their next one-on-one together. “You seem restless, and I’m not trying to offend but you could move across the country with those eye bags.”

He huffs. “Yeah, you think?” He rubs his hands across his face, pushes his glasses out of the way to dig his palms into his eyes, they’re so sore from only getting a few hours of sleep. “I can’t fucking sleep.”

“Is that new?” Pete asks.

“No, I’ve never slept once in my life. I just always look this shitty.” He wants to drop his head down onto Pete’s desk and close his eyes and groan and scream. It won’t help anything. He mumbles into both of his palms, fingers rubbing again into his sore eyes. “I thought it would go away after a few days.”

“Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t.” Pete’s eyes dart, watching Richie’s hands. “I shook like a leaf for a month, but I slept _mostly_ okay. You’re already looking sturdier, you’ve been eating?”

“Yeah. The food’s alright.” It’s at least not a shitty college buffet. “A real five-star Michelin joint.”

“That’s good!” Pete sounds pleased, his eyes wrinkle when he smiles. “Having an appetite is very good. How have your cravings been?”

“Fine?” Pete waits patiently with a neutral look, they’ve already had a discussion about one word answers and Richie knows what he’s waiting for. “I haven’t really been craving a _drink_ , but I’ve still wanted _to drink_ , like an impulse, does that make sense?”

“It makes perfect sense,” Pete says. “It’s important that you recognize the difference and identify the _habit_. When do you feel the impulse?”

It takes a second for Richie’s brain to restart, thrown off rhythm by Pete saying anything out of his mouth makes sense. How does it make sense to Pete when it doesn’t even make sense to _him_?

“When I’m bored, which is a lot.” He waves an arm toward the house as a whole. “This place gets boring real fuckin’ quick. When I can’t sleep at night.”

“Right.” Pete nods and nods like a bobblehead. 

Richie leaves Pete’s office that day with a prescription for Diazepam. Something for the high strung way his brain feels like it’s vibrating inside his head that, as a nice side effect, might actually help him sleep through the night. He hopes, because if Smiley Anthony ends up hating him he’ll really feel like a jerk.

Pete calls his name one more time before he leaves his little office. “Michelin’s highest rating is only three stars,” he says.

It catches Richie off guard. He has to roll back through their conversation to catch the reason behind the random outburst. It dawns on him and he can’t help it, it’s so stupid and he’s gone simple with exhaustion, he laughs hard.

“Fuck off, dude.” He’s still laughing as he says it, tears leaking from the corners of his eyes.

Pete puts his hands up. “Just helping your insults have a little accuracy.”

\----

Summer is officially rolling into LA, but drought hasn’t taken over yet, and it is as usual the one and only topic everyone is capable of talking about. 

Adam comes to visit, thankfully after the Diazepam and finally getting a few nights of decent sleep so he doesn’t immediately make himself look like an asshole in front of everyone in the garden. It’s crazy to feel well-rested again, at least comparatively, like all his edges have been sanded down smooth. He’s not always in a _great_ mood, but he doesn’t want to rip someone’s head off for skipping in line at the coffee station anymore either.

It’s strange to see him again, shocking. Richie really expected him to fuck off and disappear right after the trip to Santa Barbara that Richie blew off.

“You look good!” Adam says after they’ve spent the required amount of time bullshitting about the weather and the 405. 

“I look like steaming garbage.” Richie wishes they were allowed to smoke here. He hasn’t in years but would love one now, if only to keep his hands busy. 

“Well the last time I saw you, you looked like a corpse,” Adam says. “So steaming garbage is an improvement.”When Richie doesn’t respond, Adam sighs. “Just take the goddamn compliment, okay?”

“Okay, okay.” Richie accepts his defeat.

“It’s just good you’re doing this, you know?” Adam is being so _serious_ and meaning his words, it’s bizarre. They got along fine before, but they weren’t what Richie would have called _friends_ , more like neutral partners. “I’m glad.”

“Yeah, well-” Richie shrugs, deeply uncomfortable and fighting not to squirm in his seat. “It was an expensive habit and I’m recently unemployed, so…”

Blow it off, make a joke, do all the tried and true methods to dispel an awkward situation. 

“You’re allowed to do things just because they’re good for you.” Adam rolls his eyes. He can see what Richie’s doing, of course he can, he works with comedians as a job. He can choose to ignore it. “You _should_.”

So it’s going to be a _Conversation_ , he supposes, resigned. Like he isn’t having conversations in therapy every single day about _accepting help_ and practicing _self affirmations_. (Which he hates, by the way, every time Pete makes him echo something about his _inherent worth_ as a person he wants to gag.)

“Why are you being like, so nice after I fired you?” Richie asks despite not being sure he wants to know the answer. 

“I care? Obviously?” Adam looks baffled, like this was the stupidest question he’s ever been asked. Richie knows for a fact that it’s not, he’s asked _much_ stupider questions in their years together. “I don’t think that what we had was the best for you, but I still want to help you, you know?”

“No!” Richie shouts. “I don’t know! It doesn’t make sense!”

“I mean I know we don’t _hang out_ ,” Adam says. “I figured you knew I cared about you as more than a paycheck, though.”

Richie hadn’t known. At all. 

“I wanna see you get through this, find something better.”

Pete tells him every day about being okay with others helping him. He’s not alone and he doesn’t have to act like it. Maybe Richie can get on board with that… but he’s still not going to talk to himself in the mirror.

“Okay.” He pretends his smile is much steadier than it is. “Thanks.” 

xxxx

When Richie finally opens up to Pete, it almost happens by mistake. He’s been recently retested for the STI screening and handed a clean bill of health, but it hasn’t stopped the whole ordeal from rattling around in his brain like a marble in a wooden box. 

It must be written all over his face, because Pete asks what’s on his mind. And it _must_ be weighing on his mind because he actually opens his fucking mouth and tells him. 

“I had the clap, dude.” Richie stares at Pete’s desk. It’s the first time he’s said the words out loud. “You know that? Isn’t that fuckin wild?”

“I didn’t know that,” Pete confirms. “Did Claire take care of you?”

“Oh, yeah.” He nods and finally makes eye contact again, less spaced out inside his own mind. “Claire’s great, patience of a saint, I’m all good now.”

“That’s good to hear!” Pete grins over his mug at him. It’s patterned with a bunch of chameleons. “How are you feeling?”

Richie thinks, at first, that Pete is asking about the health of his dick. Like how are you feeling now that you don’t have something wrong with your junk? It strikes as pretty invasive, even for Richie. Joking about his dick in front of a crowd of people is one thing, answering a personal question about it in a one on one conversation is something else entirely. 

Then he realizes what Pete is actually asking after.

“I dunno.” His shorts have a tiny hole at the outside seam that he keeps running his pinky finger over, just feeling the texture difference across his fingertip. “Freaked out? I guess. Pissed at whoever I got it from.”

“What part freaks you out about it?” Pete presses on.

“All of it,” Richie confesses. He watches his pinky catch on the hole in his shorts and barely press inside. “That I was stupid, and careless. That it could have been worse.I spent no time thinking about it until Claire told me I was being tested, and I felt like a kid again. I was was so fuckin’ scared of getting AIDS when I was a kid.”

Pete nods and stays quiet. It’s one reason Richie actually likes the guy, he can talk when he needs to and shut the fuck up when he doesn’t. Even though all of his slow and methodical prying is finally getting him something, Richie still doesn’t hate Pete. 

“A lot of people were, but I-” He chokes, all forward momentum stopping short. 

He can’t say it, he can’t fucking say it. He’s _never_ said it out loud. It makes him feel like an idiot that he can’t say it. It’s not like he’s _hiding_ from it much anymore... and he has _very_ recent memories of having sex with Eddie, and he knows that if he could go back and do it again right now he wouldn’t even hesitate. 

_Why_ is it so hard to say?

His pinky catches the hole in his shorts again, feeling the fraying ends of the fabric becoming more frayed over the constant fondling. 

“I knew.” He swallows, but his mouth and throat are bone dry. His eyes flick toward a neutral looking Pete, feeling like a cagey dog. “Whatever, it doesn’t matter, it’s fine. I’m _fine_.”

“It doesn’t look like something that doesn’t matter,” Pete says. 

“I don’t care,” Richie insists. “I’m clean. Why the fuck do you care?”

He knows why Pete cares and he knows it’s not _fine_. He wants to run away. 

Pete doesn’t respond, but his face says more than any words ever could. What would it take to get him to lose his patience, Richie wonders. Would it be terrifying to witness? 

“Fuckin’ geez.” Richie flops his hands in his lap, huffy and indignant, finally pulling away from shredding his shorts apart like a cat in the middle of this refined office. “I knew it was a gay disease, so I knew I was going to get it because I’m gay.”

He blurts it out so suddenly in his irritation he doesn’t even think about it until he’s already said it. He all but physically slaps his hands over his mouth, he can feel his eyes bug. 

“I’ve never said that before.”

Pete looks pleased. Not in a smug disgusting way, he’s still attempting a neutral face, but his eyes are curving in an almost-smile. “How’s it feel, saying it?”

Like he’s supposed to be able to name one single emotion he’s feeling right now. Like he _knows_ what emotions he has swirling in his head right now. Is there a name for feeling on the verge of both puking and crying but also being majorly relieved and kind of happy and also horrified… and sweaty?

“I don’t know,” he finally says. “I… I don’t _know_.”

“That’s fine, that’s normal,” Pete tells him. “You don’t have to know right now.”

He’s not expecting the relief that hits him when Pete says that. This simple assurance that he and the things he’s experiencing are _normal_. Not weird, not wrong, not fucked up. Normal. He doesn’t know and he doesn’t have to, he can figure it out later.

xxxx

As much as it annoys him to admit it, Pete was right about wrapping up his first month clean. He doesn’t feel as moody as he had when he first moved in, and he isn’t a snappy asshole to people in shared living spaces anymore for no reason. Which means he doesn’t avoid the shared spaces as much anymore for fear of getting into loud arguments that make everyone hate him more than he was sure they already did.

He gets a red one month sober token. He knows it’s not, like, some personally crafted token just for him, they probably come in giant bags like arcade tokens bought in bulk, but Pete hands it to him over his desk and tells him he’s _happy for him_ and _proud of him_. It means something. Richie doesn’t remember the last time anyone has been proud of him.

He sets it on his bedside table next to his phone and looks at it often, unexpectedly pleased. Anthony congratulates him before bed, big smile and bright eyes as always. He’s a couple days away from his two month token and excited about it.

The house is a lot less boring when he stops trying to avoid everyone in it like they want to stab him. Everyone else there is actually pretty nice, and when his moods level out, they’re barely wary of his first appearances lounging around the living room. It’s not a courtesy he feels like he deserves, but he is glad for it even still. He likes that no one expects to exchange addictions and sad backstories along with introductions, they all agree there’s enough of that in therapy. They just talk to each other like people who happen to be sharing a space. It’s nice. 

He and Beth, who is blessedly right around his age, have been building a particularly difficult puzzle of Jupiter for most of their afternoons. It’s frustrating and boring but it keeps their hands occupied while they talk to each other about whatever topic comes to mind. Beth works in real estate and, surprisingly, she seems to really love it. Richie is so used to people talking about their jobs with disdain that it catches him off guard. 

So she tells him all her secrets about which plants will sell a room, he tells her about how he wanted to be a stuntman when he was a teenager, and together they build Jupiter. 

Multiple times they consider throwing the puzzle back into the box and building something easier, there are a few other choices available on one of the bookshelves, but when Richie looks the options over they’re all bird puzzles. They remind him sorely of Stan and he jerks his eyes away and tells Beth they’re out of luck.

xxxx

Nights are the hardest part of the day in the house, even with the help of his pills pushing him toward sleep a bit more easily. Everything is quiet and still, and his brain is alive with a nonstop scroll of recovering memories. Before, he drank to avoid spending even a moment alone with his thoughts, but now he has no choice.

He thinks about Palm Springs when it gets too much, trying to distract from the overwhelming feelings of missing the Losers. It’s not real and he knows it, but the thought of sharing a bed with Eddie settles in around him like an old blanket. If he closes his eyes, he can imagine Anthony’s breathing is Eddie’s on the other side of the bed and he could easily roll over and wrap around him.

In the morning some invincible brave part of him wants to pick up the phone and call them, any one of them, all of them at once somehow. He doesn’t, though, and it’s hard to recognize why the first few times. His phone is here, it works, the contacts are all available.

He wants to wait until he’s out, he realizes one morning after he spends a long time staring at his phone and his red token. So he can call them and tell them _I did it_ when it’s all over. If he calls now there stands a chance he’ll let them down again, and it would send him right back to where he started if that happened.

Pete tells him it’s normal to replay things in your mind, especially in idle moments exactly like lying in bed waiting for sleep.

“I still remember tripping on my shoelace and falling in middle school,” he says. “It makes me want to curl up in a ball.”

“What about other stuff?” Richie asks. Sure he gets those cringing embarrassing memories that pop up. Look at like, just his entire thing, he has no shortage of embarrassing moments to replay. “Other memories.”

“Yeah, sure.” Pete’s casual as always, but Richie knows he can tell they’re building to something again. “Most people revisit good memories just as often as bad ones.”

“I was bullied a lot in school… Isn’t that fuckin’ lame? To still be thinking about it thirty years later?” He hates it. How he was never able to forget it even when he forgot it. 

“Our traumas do tend to stick with us,” Pete says.

“I wouldn’t say I’m like, traumatized or whatever.” Richie pauses, remembers his visit to the arcade a year ago, and the park after that. “Okay maybe a little bit I guess.”

“You wanna tell me about it?” He asks, and Richie knows it’s a genuine question. He could say no if he wanted to and Pete wouldn’t push.

“There was a group of older kids, they beat up on me _and_ my friends for _years_.” He realizes belatedly that he’s veering dangerously close to saying too much about Derry. He needs to think of how best to deliver the insanity of his hometown. “Until one of them died and another was locked up. He killed his own dad.”

“Jesus.” It’s the most shocked reaction he’s ever dragged out of Pete, go figure it’s about Henry Bowers. 

“Yeah this wasn’t like, shoving into lockers stuff,” Richie explains. “They did that, too, but… No, it was really crazy stuff. He carried this knife everywhere.”

_And I killed him. I felt his skull split and he’s dead now because of me._

He doesn’t say it. Even thinking it rolls something sick in his gut. _Killer_.

“Yeah, Richie.” Pete’s voice is thin and shocked. “That’s the kind of trauma that sticks around.”

“Huh!” He shrugs like it’s no big deal. So whatever, he has some Henry Bowers trauma, he hardly knows anyone from Derry who doesn’t. “How about that.”

Pete tells him at the end of his session he feels confident in his assessment that Richie has anxiety. Which, yeah, now that Richie knows a little bit more about what that actually means, it makes sense to him. A month ago he never would have believed it, but here he is now, actually looking _forward_ to learning how to deal with it. It doesn’t have to control him. That voice in his mind, the clown’s, Henry’s, his own but vicious and cruel, he can make it small too. 

He’s told to attend group therapy meetings in the house. They happen every other day and are voluntary, which means he’s been avoiding them like the plague. Pete seems to think they can help him, though, and so he agrees while still riding the high of his realizations.

xxxx

When the Jupiter puzzle becomes too frustrating and scrolling on his phone becomes too boring (he’s not on any social media, a ban of his own idea with Pete’s immediate and strong support) he reads. There aren’t a whole lot of options on the two bookshelves in the living room area, but it’s not like he’s exactly in a position to be a very picky consumer either. So he sits out in the sunny garden and reads half of a steamy romance that gets so boring with all the talk of _heaving breasts_ and impractical heterosexual romps in hay beds that he closes it and gives up on it entirely. 

He reads through some heist adventure story with a bunch of teenaged characters that all talk and act like they’re in their thirties, but the story is good and he almost misses lunch because he gets so wrapped up in it. Brings it in with him tucked under one arm and eats some toasted sandwich thing that isn’t half bad but is drowning in avocado for some reason. It’s Santa Monica, he guesses, everything is drowned in avocado for some reason. 

He eats and talks with Beth and tells her that the Jupiter puzzle can go fuck itself. She laughs and agrees, but keeps on looking studiously at the pieces on the table in front of her anyway. Richie disappears back into the garden to keep reading.

It’s early morning the time he finds one of Bill’s books on the shelf. It looks old and worn, battered up but still in one piece. He takes it into the garden with a shitty instant coffee and grabs one of the available uncomfortable iron chairs to start reading. It’s an older one of Bill’s, 2008 or something, but it’s not bad. He laughs out loud at points, not because of the comedic writing, but just because so much of _Bill_ shines through the words. The way he sees the world, how he describes certain things, the phrase _phantasmagoric_. 

The garden fills up around him, people coming in and out, housemates and their visitors. Anthony jogs laps around the perimeter of the little yard for a while, always wanting to run but he hates jogging around the sidewalks in town too much, so he stays out here. He says hi on his first lap before he has headphones in and they return to existing on their own. 

Richie doesn’t notice anyone else, doesn’t notice the girl across the garden being visited by her sister. Doesn’t catch when the sister points her cellphone at him and snaps a picture.

\----

It happens gradually. The Jupiter puzzle slowly becomes a collaborative effort. At first only he and Beth work on it together when they’re very bored, then one afternoon Richie wanders into the house and a quiet girl he’s not spoken to much is working on it alone. He doesn’t think about it much, good for her if she finds where even one piece belongs. 

Then it keeps happening. That same girl alone, Beth and a newer guy to the house who seems to have taken a liking to her (in a non-creepy motherly sort of way), Anthony and two other younger housemates hovering over it laughing and shoving at each other. 

Even then the progress on the puzzle is slow, but it’s moving along. The messy pile of red and orange and brown slowly shrinks.

He goes to the group therapy Pete wanted him to try three times a week and reports back that he hates it before he’s attended his first six meetings. 

“What about it do you hate so much?” Pete asks in their one on one on a Tuesday. 

“It’s just so-” he flounders, it’s _so_ a lot of things. None of them enjoyable. “This is personal stuff! I don’t want to hear about everyone’s worst moments or whatever.” 

He doesn’t want to hear about Beth’s daughter who won’t speak to her anymore, or Anthony’s family kicking him out to be homeless, or the quiet girl’s suicide attempt. He can’t reconcile these facts with the friendly faces he spends his days with, that he’s found camaraderie with. 

“Does hearing about these change your perceptions of your housemates?” Pete asks.

“Yes!” Richie almost-shouts. 

“Does it make you think they’re bad people?” Pete has both elbows on his knees, learning forward. His nerdy sweater today is a deep red. “Because they’re addicts?”

“No, definitely no.” Beth has taken on her new baby duckling without a second thought, and Anthony has only ever been kind not only to him but to everyone in the house. “But they all have these stories and these _regrets_ and they have to share them.”

“They don’t _have_ to,” Pete corrects him. “They choose to because it’ll help them.”

Richie grinds his teeth, irritated without being able to identify why. 

“What about you?”

Richie huffs back in his seat. “What _about_ me?”

“Have you shared anything?” Pete prods and pokes and is deceptively gentle about it. Such a casual approach Richie doesn’t catch him digging half the time before he’s already said something revealing. 

“Some stuff, yeah.” It’s not a lie, Richie has shared a _little_ bit at least. He hasn’t come out, or mentioned his seizure, or that his comedy wasn’t his, or that he fired Adam… “ _Some_!”

“Is it possible,” Pete starts. Richie already hates wherever he’s headed. “That you’re worried that if you share something it will change their perceptions of you?”

“It’s not _impossible_.” Richie doesn’t want to agree or admit to a single thing, but so what if the thought of Beth looking at him with pity in her eyes makes him want to bury himself in a hole in the back garden forever. 

Before Richie leaves, Pete reminds him that he can’t force Richie to do anything, but that group therapy is only as useful as he’ll allow it to be. He doesn’t have to share everything, but it won’t kill him to open up either. 

He leaves with an empty notebook to brainstorm some parts of himself he wouldn’t mind the people he’s come to care about to know. He also has a list of phone apps to use to distract himself from any anxiety attacks he may still have. The key is catching it early, knowing the signs and pulling the brain away from its spiral. One has him alphabetizing short lists and another shows a pulsing orb he’s supposed to sync his breath to. He’s not convinced either one will do much of anything, but he doesn’t delete them from his phone, either.

xxxx

One morning during his sixth week in Santa Monica, there’s a soft tapping at his door. He’s not asleep still, just lounging and waiting around until he needs breakfast, in soft and worn sweatshorts and the first t-shirt he got his hands on last night. He might finish the second of Bill’s books he found on the shelves after breakfast, but he’s been putting it off because he thinks he knows what’s coming and he’s not going to like it.

His bare feet slap against the floor when he hustles over to answer it before he’s taken too long.

“Claire?” She’s standing outside of his bedroom door, hair as flat and tidy as always in her cozy neutral uniform. He steps back, overplayed defensiveness. “Are you chasing me down for more blood again?”

She sighs through her nose, half an exasperated laugh. “No, Richie. You have a visitor wanting to see you.”

“Oh.” It strikes odd immediately, this is not how his usual visitor routine goes. “Uh, okay. Thanks.”

She nods, sparing only a brief wary glance his way before disappearing quickly back down the hallway toward the stairs. 

The only visitor he’s ever had has been Adam, and he always texts Richie before stopping by in case he’s busy. What he thinks he’d be busy with, Richie has no idea, but it’s a nice courtesy. 

Adam hasn’t texted. It’s possible he forgot, he supposes, but it’s just…. Weird. 

He slides into his floppy house-provided slippers and without bothering to change clothes, shuffles quietly downstairs, eyes ping-ponging across the living room looking for anyone he recognizes. 

“Richie!”

He turns around and finds Mike Hanlon standing in the entrance of his rehab house, tiny paper cup of coffee in one hand.

Before he can even open his mouth to question it, Mike sets his coffee on Claire’s deserted desk, approaches Richie in a few wide steps, and wraps him in a bone crushing hug. It feels like he’s doing his damn best to lift Richie clear off the ground, but they’re too evenly matched in height. 

“ _Mike_?” Richie stands, too stunned to move. He wheezes and claps one hand to Mike’s back, feeling like his ribs are creaking under the pressure of his strong arms. “Dude.”

“Oh!” Mike pulls back but hardly steps away, strong hands holding onto Richie’s shoulders. “Sorry.”

“Mike, what the fuck, dude.” Richie looks him up and down, almost unable to believe it’s really him at all. He looks good, dressed comfortably in some athletic looking hoodie. The happy look on his face makes him look younger than he had in Derry. “What are you doing here?”

He looks around them, hesitant. “Can we talk somewhere?”

So Richie leads him back out into the garden where they sit together, two mediocre coffees held between them. 

“How are you doing?” Mike asks the moment they’re seated, eager and earnest.

“What-” Richie stumbles trying to find the words he wants in the moment. “How did you know I’m here?”

“You, oh, you were on Twitter.” Richie furrows in confusion, he hasn’t been on Twitter in weeks. “A picture of you reading one of Bill’s books. It kind of blew up.”

There’s a sinking pit in his stomach, cold and aching and… violated. 

“Who posted it?” He asks, then changes his mind. “Don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.”

“They didn’t blast your location out there, if that helps.” Mike looks sheepish. “I found out on my own. I guess keeping tabs on you is kind of a habit.”

It does actually help him a bit to know the general public doesn’t know the exact street address of where he is, not that TMZ would give much of a shit about a low-tier celebrity. The story of his comeback from a meltdown is old enough to be too stale to cover. He’s not high enough to drag down or low enough to kick into the dirt. 

“You were?”

It’s kind of sweet, in a very Mike Hanlon sort of way, always keeping an eye out for his friends, always watching. To be honest he’d found it creepy at first, hearing Mike talk about all the notes he had on them all as they grew older separately. 

He likes it, now. He knows it means Mike cares. And if he’s still taking notes on Richie after he’s ignored all of the Losers for a year, he still cares. Maybe Richie hasn’t burned all of his bridges as much as he’d feared. 

“Of course I was.” Mike blinks at him like he can’t believe Richie would dare to be surprised by this. “We’ve been worried about you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AND THEN SHE NEVER WROTE MEDICAL DRAMA AGAIN 
> 
> cw: richie has his blood drawn, there are talks of STIs throughout the chapter, Richie has some outdated views on STIs


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one is for you!!!!!! Mike Hanlon. it's all for you, my boy. I respect u so much. 
> 
> Thank you again for the patience as I write this! I hope you're all staying safe and ok in quarantine and if I have anything to offer it's another 9k break away from thinking about it.

“You guys worried about me?” Richie asks, surprised. Like he wouldn’t be worrying his guts into knots if one of the other Losers pulled half of what he has in the last year.

“Yeah, of course!” Mike’s eyebrows are furrowed and serious. “You know we had a kind of one year reunion a couple weeks ago?”

“No shit?” Richie asks. 

“Yeah, it’s early, but it’s the best we could work out,” Mike says.”It didn’t feel right without you there, though.”

He needs Mike to not continue this line of thought or he _is_ going to cry right here in the garden in front of everyone and embarrass both of them. 

“Then we saw the Twitter thing and it explained a lot.”

Richie huffs a laugh because if he doesn’t he’ll lose it. He watches his finger trace the swirling floral pattern of the cast iron table. 

“Richie, I’m sorry.” To his surprise, Mike’s voice wavers and wobbles. It jerks Richie’s gaze back up from the table to his distressed expression. 

“Mike?” He feels just as unsteady and unsure as when Beverly had left him standing with a baby held in his arms. 

“I’m sorry.” He drags a palm roughly over both of his eyes, his lips pulled down into a shaky frown. “I dragged you back there, I lied about the ritual.”

His breath hitches, hand still tight over his eyes. It’s the cistern all over again; Mike, tears streaming, apologizing over and over again before Bill had to tackle him out of harm’s way. Richie bounces out of his seat, alarmed and overcome with the need to do _something_. 

“Mike, no.” He trips over his stupid slippers crossing the space around their small garden table to reach Mike. “It’s not about that.]]”

Richie reaches out with one hand, reaching to pull Mike’s hand from his face so at the very least he will look at him. He barely grazes Mike’s wrist before he’s standing from his seat and wrapping around Richie in another tight hug. This time Richie has the mindset to hug him back, and they stand there, two grown men crying into each other’s shoulders in a garden behind a rehab house. 

Their tears die down, Richie’s hand finds the back of Mike’s neck and just holds there, keeping him close even if they aren’t crying anymore.

He sniffle-snorts disgustingly against Mike’s shirt. “You smell good, what the fuck.”

Mike’s laugh is a relief, a fresh breath after stepping out of a too shower-hot bathroom. 

“I love you, man,” Mike says against Richie’s neck. 

“I love you too, Mikey,” he replies, cheek to cheek. He pulls away to look him in his dark, watery eyes, keeps his hand firm on the back of his neck still. “Seriously, this whole thing is only _partly_ Derry related.”

“I missed you,” Mike says. “We all have.”

“Stop.” Richie chokes through a laugh. He finally pulls his hands away from Mike to wipe at his damp face. “Stop, I don’t want to cry again.”

Mike laughs too, using the sleeve of his hoodie to wipe at his own face. 

“What are you doing in LA?” Richie asks Mike once they’re both seated again, still having only a few lingering sniffles.

“I was around, visiting Bill and Audra mostly.” Mike shrugs. “Getting to see how the stars live.”

“What about Florida?” He remembers Mike talking about Florida in high school with some frequency, no solid plan other than showing up and seeing what was there. 

“I went,” Mike confirms. “It’s fuckin’ hot. I think after 40 years in Maine I’m just not made for that kind of heat.” 

It makes Richie laugh hard again. There’s something so funny about holding onto some abstract goal as a kid and finding out it actually blows. He did the same shit, planning all through high school to move to Chicago and make it in comedy there. He lasted two Chicago winters before he left and never looked back. Maine had rough winters, of course, but something about the frigid air in a giant city where all the snow turned to filthy slush and his shitty cheap apartment barely kept him warm was too depressing to keep going with. 

“I’ve been here and there.” Mike looks content, Richie’s happy for him. Finally getting to venture farther than the little space of Derry. “I might go to Alaska next, Europe, I don’t know.”

Before Mike leaves (and it’s been hours, Richie is starving and the sun is blazing high above them) he asks if he can tell the other Losers that they’ve seen each other. Richie had already been going on the assumption that that was going to be the very first thing he did, so he appreciates that he actually asks. That’s Mike, of course, always thoughtful, always considering what someone else wants. 

He asks Mike to wait. Feel free to tell them Richie’s like, not dead or missing or whatever, they can know he’s doing okay (he really is, too, he tells Mike again and again), but he wants to talk to them himself about everything in detail. He owes some apologies, and Mike doesn’t deserve the burden of being the middleman for a bunch of awkward conversations. 

Mike agrees easily. Again, of course he does. Richie wonders if he’s ever been in a fight in his life, he’s just so _pleasant_. Encounters with Bowers don’t count, having a hate crime committed against you isn’t a fight. 

“I’m proud of you. Seriously.” They’re standing again, in the middle of an awkward half-leaving standoff where they both know it’s time for Mike to go but neither one of them particularly _want_ him to. 

“Well…” Richie hates how _bashful_ he gets around this sort of sentiment. Couldn’t handle it from Adam, wants to squirm away from it with Mike. “Drinking wasn’t helping me forget so I had to try something else.”

“Hardly know a Loser who’s not in therapy these days.” Mike smiles and shrugs like this is no big deal. Richie didn’t know any of his friends were in therapy… Didn’t even know they were struggling. They seemed so fine right after. “Is it okay if I visit again?”

“Yes, Mike, Jesus,” Richie answers in a rush. “You know after the hours of therapy and shit this place is really boring?”

Mike pulls him into another tight, warm hug and laughs into his shoulder. “I’ll see you, then,” he says, and moments later he’s gone. 

Richie spends his entire afternoon and evening reminding himself that Mike’s visit was real.

xxxx

Richie tells Pete about Mike showing up unexpectedly to visit him. He watches it click for Pete when he explains that Mike is from his group of loser friends as a teenager. The ones who were all bullied by the same kids. He’s concerned about Richie’s picture being posted to Twitter, the violation of his privacy and trust, but Richie insists he’s already over it. It’s fucking rude, yeah, but it also brought him Mike. He finds it kind of hard to be that upset about anything that brings Mike back into his life. 

“How long has it been since you’ve seen Mike?” Pete asks. 

“Oh, we had a kind of reunion last year,” Richie explains. “He’s not just an old middle school friend tracking me down.”

“That’s a lot less weird.” Pete nods, agreeing. “And the reunion..?”

“All of us, Mike and five others. We called ourselves the Losers Club.” Pete smiles like he gets it. Richie’s sure he does, to a degree, but he’s not sure there are enough words in the English language to fully explain what the Losers meant to each other. “They’re good people.”

Something must show on his face. He doesn’t know what, but he catches it in how Pete looks back at him, in his telling eyebrow twitch he’s come to be familiar with after several weeks of talking every day. 

“Tell me about the reunion.” Pete’s suggestion is as unassuming as always, bordering on gentle without coddling. 

How the _fuck_ is he supposed to talk about the reunion without talking about _the reunion_. 

“We all went home to Maine, which sucked.” He’s scowling, can feel it pulling his lips. “Just, shitty memories, you know? I left for a reason.

It was good to see them all again, though, but…”

Pete, as usual in these moments, sits quiet and waiting. Always patient to let Richie find the words he needs. It’s more appreciated now than ever, when Richie needs to carefully censor the weirdest worst days of his life. 

“Two of us almost died. Freak accident situations, but it was really… a lot.” It’s a lame finish to a ‘several of my friends almost died right in front of me’ story, but what can you do. 

“Almost died?” Pete sounds as shocked as he had when Richie told him about Bowers. 

“Yeah, uh-” He focuses extra, extra hard on not drawing out his ‘ _uh_ ’, on not sounding like he’s thinking up a cover story just now. “We were in this old house from when we were kids and it collapsed. Basically.”

“Really?” Pete’s eyebrows are practically to his hairline. 

“Yeah.” The word puffs out on a weak laugh. He knows how insane it sounds, it _is_ insane. “Eddie was- was impaled right in front of me.”

He can still see it. Stan bolting like the devil was on his tail and pulling at Eddie. Watching Eddie get stabbed anyway. He tries to not let the memory haunt him. The haunting is what made him want to drown his brain in alcohol before.

Instead he thinks about Eddie in the hospital, looking pale, but strong and healthy and determined to get out. Eddie in their kitchen in Palm Springs talking to Ted in a conversational tone while washing lettuce. In their bed at the Outer Banks house grinning up at him like he knew every thought in Richie’s head, scar tissue strong and stunning. 

Eddie’s alive, he’s fine, he’s in New York working his boring job. As far as he knows, anyway. Maybe he quit and became an ice fisherman.

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Richie says. 

“Yeah, of course,” Pete agrees immediately. “You don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to.”

\----

He continues to struggle with group therapy, though he gets much better about attending with only minor griping. 

It’s still tough to listen to people he’s come to think of as friends share parts of themselves they aren’t proud of, but he remembers everything that Pete had mentioned to him. It helps him to see more, with a new perspective. No one is forcing anyone to share, when someone new shakes his head when asked if he wants to talk, no questions are asked; and when Anthony talks about his fears of losing the house as a constant support system when he finishes his three months, everyone listens to him.

The group moves to Richie, already prepared to continue moving on from him as has become standard for any days he sits in with them. 

“Actually,” he speaks up before he loses his nerve. “I kind of do want to talk about something.”

Group sessions aren’t led by Pete and if he’s honest he’s kind of glad for it. Pete is easy to talk to, but he imagines there would be a weird self-created pressure to share more if Pete were there. Ana, their leader, looks pleasantly surprised. 

Richie tells them about Mike coming to visit and the relief it’s brought to him. He tells them how they last saw each other a year ago and how afraid he’s been that all of his bridges had been completely burned. It gives him hope. He only realizes it at the exact moment he’s saying it. It gives him hope that the rest of his friends will forgive him for cutting them all off and being an asshole just like Mike did. 

After, Beth claps his shoulder and Richie plummets. 

“Shit, Beth, I’m sorry. I didn’t even think.” He sat there talking happily about reuniting with someone he worried wouldn’t want to see him and the hope he has that his friends don’t hate him with Beth right there. Not even thinking for a moment that it might hurt her, knowing that a person she desperately misses still won’t reach out to her. 

“Stop that.” She pats the side of his face in a mockery of a slap, only the tips of her fingers making any contact. She points up at him, cutting an intimidating figure despite being almost an entire foot shorter than him. “Come work on this god damned puzzle with me.”

He follows her over to the table. Jupiter has made a lot of progress since he last sat down to work on it. There are several tidy piles of different colors left meticulously organized, a pile with red flashes and another with blue flashes, ones of different shades of orange that all look identical to him. He takes care to keep them apart. 

“I’m happy for you and your friend,” Beth says after grumbling at three or four pieces that don’t fit in a row. “Don’t feel guilty for being happy.”

“Yeah but-”

“Katie will be very angry if you make me throw puzzle pieces at you,” she threatens. He thinks Katie is the quiet girl he’s seen building Jupiter alone sometimes, he’s not sure. “We have very different histories, Richie. You being happy doesn’t make me unhappy.”

Pete is always telling him he isn’t responsible for other people’s feelings. It’s one of the many affirmations he’s made to repeat constantly. It makes him roll his eyes, but he finds himself replaying it now in his mind. Beth says she’s happy for him. He can’t decide that she’s lying and resentful, and if she was, that would be something for her to deal with. He can be happy that Mike doesn’t hate him.

“Okay.” He smiles over at Beth, trying to be sturdy and sure. “Thanks. Want some coffee?”

“God, yes.”

\----

Richie talks to Pete about coming out. It’s not as scary a conversation as he thought it would be because the entire thing plays out in hypotheticals. Is coming out something _someone_ should do? What if _someone_ doesn’t want _everyone_ to know? How do _people_ even go about it? 

Pete reminds him that no one owes anything to anyone except for themselves. Especially not personal details if they don’t want to share them. If someone comes out to anyone it should be for themselves, because it can be freeing, or because holding it as a secret can be stressful. It’s not a decision to be made because of someone else. 

After their conversation, Richie spends a long afternoon in his bedroom staring at the ceiling and thinking. It’s not something he makes a habit of doing, not when his thoughts so often lead into a downward spiral, but he’s getting better about that. The apps he downloaded help more than he would expect, and as an added bonus he’s getting really good at 2048. 

He’s about halfway to a decent tile in his game (he thought about coming out during his next group session and then quickly _stopped_ thinking about that) when Anthony waltzes into their room. 

“What’s up?” He asks, flopping heavily down onto his own bed. “Looks like you’re having a big think.”

Richie snorts. “Nah, like medium-sized really.”

Anthony sighs long and hard. He shifts on his bed, springs creaking with his every move, to grab a pillow so he’s half hugging half laying on top of it. “Me too. Dr. Pete’s helping me look for an apartment.”

“Oh yeah?” Richie drops his phone, rolling onto his side to look at Anthony properly. “Only a few more weeks, right?”

“Yeah,” Anthony confirms. He looks tired, weary. “Back out to reality.”

“Hey, man, you’ll do fine out there.” He feels out of his depth, trying to comfort someone else about something he himself is on shaky ground with. “I mean that, you have a good head on you.”

“Thanks.” Anthony’s smile isn’t of his usual bright and shining variety. His eyes flick, gaze wandering the room before looking back at Richie. “I’m worried my ex will find out where I move to.”

He’s mentioned parts of this in group sessions, kind of. Alluding to fears of feeling alone outside of the house but also of fears of falling right back into his old groups. He’s never before mentioned any exes though. 

“She’s nice but, you know-“ he shrugs. “Not the best influence.”

Richie knows the general idea, sure. He didn’t exactly hang with a crowd that influenced him to get blasted every single day. Quite the opposite, he specifically avoided the people who would encourage him not to. 

“You got a girlfriend?” Anthony asks. 

“Nah.” Richie swallows. Vulnerability for vulnerability, he thinks. What better trial run than this now? If it goes well, that’s great. If it goes poorly, in a few weeks he’ll never have to see Anthony again if he doesn’t want to. “I’m gay.”

His blood rushes in his ears and he goes hot all over. It takes him a second to even realize Anthony is replying. 

“Oh, cool.” He smashes his pillow so it’s not pressing against his cheek anymore. “A boyfriend, then?”

He can only blink stupidly. “Wait, that’s it?” 

“Yeah?” Anthony looks somehow just as confused as Richie is. “Wait, is this a new thing?” 

“Telling people is!” Richie exclaims, voice high and tense. “Doesn’t this make things awkward?”

Anthony is still laying out across his bed, half propped up on his pillow staring back across their two little end tables at him. 

His eyebrows press together, down over his dark eyes. “We’ve already lived together this whole time, why would it be awkward now?”

Richie can only shrug, arms stiff. 

“Well, no, it’s not awkward.”

He doesn’t know what he was expecting, but it wasn’t this, he knows that much. Shock, maybe, at the very least a ‘ _really_?’, but no. Not even a loud ‘good for you’ type of acceptance, a fact for which he’s more grateful than Anthony could ever imagine. It’s an awkward enough moment as it is, he doesn’t need his younger rehab roommate to pat him on the shoulder like a proud father. Even he isn’t that far gone. 

It’s just… acceptance plain and simple. No bells and whistles. Like it’s the easiest and most natural thing from Anthony. 

Maybe, he thinks, the kids are alright after all.

xxxx

When he tells Pete he came out to Anthony, Pete acts like he landed on the moon. 

“Is it kind of a dick move to use him as a trial run?” Richie asks.

It hasn’t been weighing on him or anything. Actually, he’s felt lighter since speaking the words out loud, outside of a therapist's office. It was scary, and he was sweaty, but the words felt _right_ the second he spoke them. 

“Not at all,” Pete tells him. “You tell people when, how, and why you want to.”

“I am not obligated to share anything.” It’s one of the many phrases Pete has made Richie repeat over and over in his office. Maybe it’s beginning to sink in. “I know, yeah.”

Pete asks and Richie tells him that saying the words felt like a weight being lifted. It’s kind of dread-inducing to think that he’s going to have to do it again, a dozen more times, a hundred more times, but he’s getting better at slowing down and thinking one step at a time. 

Losers first, everyone else can wait until he’s good and ready. 

Richie and Beth more or less lose custody of Jupiter. Which, honestly, good riddance, the puzzle was a headache and he’s glad to be rid of it. It’s nearing completion and is often surrounded by groups of people working and chattering over it together. 

Claire teases them both about it good naturedly, happy grin on her face when she suggests they’d spent more time talking over it than actually working on it. She’s not entirely wrong, either! It’s been nice, though, watching it gradually become a collaborative effort, seeing some of the younger housemates circled around the table together groaning at all the same colored pieces and laughing. Even if that collaboration doesn’t include Richie or Beth (it could if they tried, which they are both noticeably not doing). 

Only, without it, the boredom comes again until finally he hits his limit and grabs one of the stupid bird puzzles and shakes it out onto a table with Beth. She hadn’t asked him about his aversion, because she’s the nicest person on Earth, and she doesn’t ask him about his sudden recovery to his aversion either. She simply starts by picking through the mess to find the corner pieces quietly. 

“My friend liked birds when we were kids,” Richie says as he drags another edge piece into place. “He was a Boy Scout, but what kind of twelve year old goes _bird watching_.”

Beth’s smile is sweet and fond. “My daughter, Lauren, was like that a bit. Old for her age. Would rather sew little pillows and stuffed things than run outside and make a mess.”

“Stan _hated_ messes too.” It hurts to think of Stan, a kid who voluntarily wore khaki shorts all summer long, being dragged into the sewers and messes and all out battles. “I just miss him.”

He doesn’t have to explain anything else. Beth doesn’t need to know the details, about how Stan asked all of his oldest friends to never contact him again, or that looking at the birds on this little puzzle reminds him of Stan looking old and beat down. He doesn’t let his mind roam. He makes the effort to stay present, and he builds his puzzle.

xxxx

Mike is back for another visit within three days. He has pictures on his phone from the latest of his California tourist stops that they glance through in the garden. The air is still, hot and stuffy with the threat of rain that will probably never come.

“Is Bill even tall enough for Space Mountain?” Mike gives Richie a real capital L _Look_ over his phone. “What!”

“Four year olds are tall enough for Space Mountain.” Mike’s voice has all the eyeroll in it that his too ingrained manners won’t let him actually do. “It was nice! We saw fireworks.”

“Mm, cute,” Richie says to a picture of Bill holding an oversized turkey leg. 

“Bill will be happy to hear you’re still making fun of him.” Mike locks his phone and drops it onto the table between them with a clack. 

That strikes as odd. Bill, the ever-suffering older brother figure despite being only a few months older at most. Maybe because he was the only one with any actual experience with _being_ an older brother that they looked up to him like that. He would sometimes get a kick out of Richie being Richie, but it was just as often Bill and Stan making eye contact with each other and rolling their eyes at him. 

“He misses you,” Mike adds, sounding like this should have been obvious. 

That’s somehow even _more_ odd. It was Bill who stopped coming to visit him, who stopped reaching out. Stopped caring, as far as Richie knew.

“He feels-” Mike waffles for his phrasing and Richie huffs a breath of a laugh. Bill _feels_ more than anyone Richie knows, that’s always been true. “Guilty. He couldn’t help.”

“Classic Bill.” Richie flips his phone around in his hand, too much nervous energy. He hits the top against the table, drags his pinched fingers down, flips it and hits the bottom on the table. Bang, flip, bang, flip, bang, flip. “Wants to be the hero.”

“Richie, I- Don’t be mad at Bill.” His voice is too close to pleading for Richie to be at all comfortable. “Don’t think he gave up on you.”

“I mean,” Richie says, gesturing broadly with one hand as if to point out all of the Bills that aren’t here. 

“No, no, it was-” Mike stares over the table at him with his big dark eyes. Eyebrows pulled together almost desperately, like they were at the Jade, begging them to listen to him. “He was worried the most when you started pulling away, you know? He told us he worried when he visited you, didn’t know what to do.

“I encouraged him to give you some space.”

What he says strikes true to Richie. He knows, should have known, Bill doesn’t give up on his friends. That would have been hard to believe before, though, when it felt so much like that was exactly it. Like Richie has finally crossed the line into too burdensome to bother with. No one could have known that it wasn’t _space_ he needed. 

“If you’re mad at anyone, be mad at me,” Mike presses. “I thought it would help if you had the room to grow… come into yourself.”

Richie keeps spinning his phone and clacking it against the table. He’ll probably scratch it since he never bothered with a case, but considering the screen is still spiderwebbed from when he threw it across the room once, it’s hard to care too much about it. He can feel like lines of the cracks sliding over his thumb with every twirl and push. 

“Into myself?” He asks. “I’m not a gymnast.”

Mike’s eyebrows pull together, eyes darting to try and catch the thread of conversation, then shoot up. “Richie!” He yells, sitting back in his seat laughing. “Disgusting.”

“I’m not mad at anyone, Mikey,” he admits. “I get it.”

“Okay.” Mike is visibly relieved, but doesn’t press or ask Richie if he’s _sure_. 

“I know I owe him a conversation, just… “ He waves a hand around again vaguely. “Not here.”

It’s one thing for Mike to see him here, not at his lowest but only just beginning to drag himself back from there. Mike knows all this anyway, he kept tabs on all of the Losers’ highs and lows for almost 30 years. Bill, though… Maybe that older brother worship never fully left Richie, which feels silly, but he wants to see Bill when he’s finished something good for himself. When he can walk out of here, recovered from the worst of it all. 

Mike smiles wide and warm. “He was so embarrassed when he realized what you were reading in that picture. It’s old, not his best.”

Richie can’t not smile right back at him. Mike might have the most infectious smile he’s seen. 

“No kidding, it was _so_ bad.”

\------

When Richie comes to awareness in his bed that night, he recognizes almost immediately that he’s paralyzed. It happens sometimes, not often, but enough that he knows what to expect.

The clown.

He’ll know the clown is there. He won’t be able to move his eyes to see him, but he’ll hear him. Sometimes he mocks and sings, other times he stands there watching from a corner, faintly jingling when he moves. 

That’s not what happens. 

There’s laughter. But not what he expects… Lower, not the high pitched giggle he knows. Richie tries to turn his head, an involuntary reaction to the surprise that sends a new jolt of adrenaline through him when he finds again that he can’t move. 

The laughter grows and swells into a cackle. He can feel the presence in the room, sense it getting closer. He recognizes it, a shadow at the side of his bed, only just beyond his field of vision. 

Bowers.

“Kill them all,” the Bowers-shadow says. His voice almost echoes in the dark in an inhuman way, nothing like he’d ever been in real life. He laughs again. “Kill them all.”

Richie tries everything, tries wiggling his toes and controlling his breathing and telling himself ‘ _Bowers is dead, he’s dead, I killed him, he’s dead_.’ Bowers only laughs more, repeating his words in an increasing volume until he’s screaming them, until they become unintelligible garbled noise.

He wakes up with a gasp, blinded by the bright overhead light turned on above him. His vision adjusts, still blurred but not shocked white anymore. Anthony has one hand on his shoulder, looking frightened. 

“Anthony?” Richie’s sweating, his arms feel like they’re somewhere between shaking and covered in chills. 

“Dude, are you okay?” 

Richie sighs and collapses back against his bed, shaky but relieved. 

“You were making weird noises.” He finally pulls his hand away from Richie’s shoulders and it’s a relief when he moves back a bit, less looming even if he is smaller than Richie. 

“Yeah,” Richie finally croaks. His mouth is bone dry. “Nightmare.”

It doesn’t take too much convincing to get Anthony back to bed, it’s the middle of the night and he’s visibly still half asleep. Richie finds his legs steadier when he stands to make his way to the bathroom, at least to scoop a few desperate handfuls of water into his mouth. He’s snoring lightly by the time he gets back to the room.

Hours pass of Richie half dozing and half looking at his phone before he manages to fully fall back to sleep, the beginnings of morning light shining through his window. He misses breakfast, but the giant coffee carafe is perpetually full anyway, so he at least has something warm to take outside and allow himself to relax back to a base level of anxiety.

xxxx

His nightmare makes it back to Pete, which isn’t very surprising considering it’s basically the only interesting thing to happen in the building all week. Anthony must have talked to someone about it, and any ounce of gossip spread like wildfire through dry leaves. Richie doesn’t blame him for it, he gets it, if another person in their house shit their pants he would be morbidly curious about it too. Pete asks Richie about his version of it, since no one seems to really know the truth.

“It was just sleep paralysis,” Richie says. “It happens sometimes.”

Scary as it was, the fear hasn’t really lingered past that night. He’s used to the paralysis nightmares, by now. Bowers was not a pleasant change of pace for things, but he’s gotten better at not letting them affect his days. 

What has lingered is something much harder for him to put a name to. Unease, maybe. Something cold and heavy in his chest. 

“Can I ask about something?”

“Anything,” Pete responds eagerly. “It’s what I’m here for.”

“I…” He can’t quantify how much he doesn’t want to talk about this, but he knows he has to. He knows he needs it off his chest now. “I hurt someone.”

“We’ve all-”

“No!” Richie interrupts before he can spout off about how they’ve all done damages. “Like physically, in a fight. Last year.”

It’s the first time he’s talked about it since it happened. Since the moment it happened, only having a couple minutes to fully absorb it happening before he needed to rush off to stop Bill from getting himself killed. He squashed it so far down he acted like it never happened. Bringing it back up takes him back to the library, he can practically smell the dusty books from memory alone. 

“Tell me about it,” Pete says. 

“It was at the reunion, uh, pre-house collapse.” Richie scrubs a hand over his face, up and through his hair. It needs cutting again, it’s curling out awkwardly over his ears and getting on his nerves. 

“This was one hell of a reunion,” Pete comments. 

“You have no idea.” Richie groans and presses his finger and thumb across the bridge of his nose, scrubbing across his eyes before he crosses a leg and traps both hands between his thighs. At least that way it’ll stop him from fidgeting. 

“Take as long as you need,” Pete encourages.

After a moment, Richie begins. He doesn’t tell Pete _everything_ , doesn’t include that it was his childhood bully who escaped from state care under the spell of a being from space, but he tells him most of it. Walking into the library and hearing the sounds of fighting, seeing Mike in danger, not being able to think but acting to get him to stop. 

He doesn’t tell him about the ax or the feeling of the solid hit reverberating up into his shoulder, the sickening noise it made. 

“I feel bad that I hurt someone, but I don’t regret doing it,” he confesses after his story. “Is that fucked up?” It feels fucked up. As soon as he says the words out loud it feels like condemnation. 

“It’s not fucked up.” Pete’s voice is unusually serious, almost grave. A far stretch from his normal casual approach. “You did it to help your friend.”

Richie can still see the glint of the knife, only centimeters from Mike’s face. 

“It’s almost a type of survivor’s guilt,” Pete says. “People who act in self defence will sometimes feel this way. Second guessing and dwelling.

“You weren’t in a logical decision making situation. You acted on an instinctive human level to protect someone.”

Richie knows he’s right. There was no time to think, no time to weigh pros and cons and alternate routes of action. It was Bowers dying or Mike dying and he knew which he preferred. 

“I’m going to do some reading up on this.” Pete claps his hands on his knees and stands. “I’ll come back with something more substantial than _probably_ s and _maybe_ s.”

“Okay.” It feels… better, knowing what he’s experiencing is a documented thing. He’s not just going insane trying to cope with things, it’s _normal_. Even without answers in his hand yet, it’s better. 

xxxx

Officially past the midway point of his rehabilitation, Richie starts to see the beginnings of increasing freedoms. He’s proven that he isn’t going to run off and drink first chance he gets, and with Mike as a recurring presence, Pete feels more confident than ever about his support system outside of the house. Mike just hits people like that, one look and you think _dependable_. 

It starts out with afternoon passes away from the house. The first time Mike comes to visit in his rental Richie demands that they find the nearest In-N-Out as soon as possible and run to it like their lives depend on it. Mike humors him, because Mike is _good_ and always does. 

They eat together, Richie slouched deep into his booth seat like he’s overwhelmed by the ecstasy of his first decent burger in he doesn’t know how long. Couple months ago most of his carb intake was liquid, he can’t remember the last time he ate anything that tasted better than _okay_. 

Mike laughs at him when he pouts at his empty milkshake cup sadly. 

“It’s good,” Mike concedes. “I don’t know if it’s _that_ good.”

“What, sick of LA cuisine already?” Richie asks without looking up from where he’s swirling his straw around in his cup trying to gather enough melted remains to slurp them up.

“This is the first I’ve tried it.” _That_ grabs Richie’s full attention. Mike shrugs. “Audra’s a vegetarian, Bill would rather have sushi.” 

“I knew Bill shouldn’t be trusted to give you the full LA experience,” Richie says. He sets his cup down with a hollow clatter. He mumbles through a disbelieving laugh, “ _Sushi_.”

“It’s good!” Mike shouts. 

Another afternoon away from the house he and Mike go to his apartment together. Richie delivers a long list of warnings on the ride there. He doesn’t know how he left it, it’s possible it’s covered in almost two-month old puke, like he’s pretty sure he didn’t make a mess but he wasn’t exactly in his right mind that day either. 

They’re cleaning up his place together, getting rid of any lingering bottles of anything with alcohol content except for the bottle of hand sanitizer Richie doesn’t remember owning.   
Mike calls it a depression den and he’s not entirely wrong, it kind of sucks, but they work at it and his place isn’t huge so they finish with time to order a pizza.

“When I saw you guys all making it big, I gotta say-” Mike licks some grease from his thumb and wipes his hand on his jeans. It’s refreshing to see someone as drop-dead handsome as Mike being a slob. “This isn’t what I pictured.”

“Yeah.” Richie looks at the walls around them, peeling wallpaper and a weird stain on the kitchen ceiling. “It’s a shithole.”

Mike snorts into his next bite of pizza. 

“I dunno, maybe I’ll look for a new place after this.” He shrugs like it’s not something he’s already been thinking about for a week. About the familiar bars right down the street he could find blindfolded. This place doesn’t hold his best memories (or his worst but that’s something else entirely) and coming back… it doesn’t hold a lot of appeal. “You staying with Bill?”

Mike nods. He might be slob enough to wipe his fingers on his jeans, but he must draw a line at talking with his mouth full.

“Ugh, living with married people,” Richie groans. “Keep my key, you can always stay here if you need an escape.”

“Hey,” Mike’s voice carries a dadly admonishment to it. “It’s been nice staying with them.”

“Uh-huh.” His syllables drip with doubt, but Mike doesn’t mention it, too busy reaching across the couch to steal Richie’s discarded pepperoni. 

Before they leave, pizza box discarded, leftover breadsticks wrapped and ready to go home with Mike, Richie sits again on his lumpy secondhand couch and looks over at Mike.

“Hey, can I say something?” Richie asks. He hasn’t even fully formed his thought and his palms are already sweating. 

“Yeah, Rich.” Mike nods and sits back in his seat, listening. His listening posture is so different from Pete’s, less casual, Richie knows Mike’s entire attention is on him. “Anything.”

“I’ve hardly told anyone before so…” He has to fight his gag reflex, anxiety making his throat tense up and wanting to retch. This is so much scarier than with Anthony. “I’m like, gay.”

“Like gay?” Mike asks after a not insignificant pause.

“Just gay.” Richie clears his throat. “I am.” He sounds like fucking Yoda.

“Oh, Richie.” He hopes Mike can’t tell he’s freaking out. Though for as much as he’s holding perfectly still like a scared baby deer, it might be more obvious than he thinks. “Come here.”

Mike stands again and lifts Richie out of his seat with a strong grip, yanking him into another one of his strong squeezing hugs. It hits with such a powerful wave of relief that Richie wasn’t prepared for, sinking his shoulders down and practically sagging against Mike’s body. 

“Thanks for telling me,” Mike says, dutifully pretending he can’t tell that Richie is crying on him _again_. 

Conversation passes easily in the car on the way back. It feels insane, like Richie’s in some kind of crazy mirror world. He just told one of the most important people in his life the biggest secret he’s been carrying with him for as long as he can remember, and Mike just wants to talk about the shitty Netflix movie he was watching with his married roommates. God, he loves Mike so much.

“What about you?” He asks eventually. When better to bring it up than in standstill traffic in LA? “Got a girl in every port?”

“Something like that.” Mike grins, but his eyes are glued to the road, trying desperately to merge into the next lane. “Not always a girl though.”

Richie suddenly gains a whole new appreciation for Mike’s response to his coming out, because he can’t make his mouth say anything. He struggles through a half formed ‘wuh’ a couple times. 

When he does finally find his voice again, it’s indignant. “Michael! You get to come out all cool and casual after I got snot all over you?!”

Mike laughs up at the roof of the car. “Sorry, should I try again? I can cry if you need me to.”

“Yeah, please!” Richie tells into the car. “It’s the only way I can finish.”

Mike laughs harder. “You’re the second Loser I’ve told.” He holds one closed fist out over the middle console. 

“Hell yeah.” Richie reaches over and bumps their knuckles together. “I’ll take second place.”

xxxx

His second month in the house wraps up in a whirlwind. Anthony leaves with hugs and tears from multiple people in the house, and suddenly Richie is in his room alone, his name the only one on the cheap little letterboard. He gets his two month token, green, and sits in bed staring at it for long minutes at a time. Two months feels like a lifetime, he hasn’t wanted a drink all month, not even while out with Mike inside his own apartment. 

It feels good.

He tells Pete this who smiles at him like he just told him he was going to give him a million bucks. 

“That’s great to hear, seriously.” His smile is too infectious and Richie finds himself answering in kind. “Have you thought about goals after leaving the house?”

“I dunno.” He shrugs. “Keep not drinking? I’m unemployed basically now.”

“That so?” Pete has shown a basic understanding of how working in Hollywood goes; Richie is not the first celebrity patient he’s had. Still, he looks confused. 

“I mean-“ He scrubs his fingers through his hair and tries to pat it into something like order. “I fired my agent, all the fake material is gone, what’s left?”

“What do you _want_ to be next?” Pete asks.

Richie considers his answer for a minute. His mind jumps first to getting back on stage the moment he can, thinking about writing his own material. He’s already made one comeback show within the past twelve months, why not a second one? He has nothing written, but that doesn’t have to mean anything here and now. He’s not ready to reveal _everything_ just yet, but people love hearing about famous people in rehab, that alone could get him half a set.

His mind wanders back to Palm Springs, the fun he had in a recording booth finding the right voice for a character and bringing it to life. Even if he only really worked a couple of days in his time there, he can see it being satisfying work. It would be nice to finally have an actual use for the voices he’s been using his entire life. No question they generally go to waste on his current audience.

He thinks of the Losers. How long it’s been since he’s seen any of them other than Mike. How much he owes them for not simply dropping him like dead weight. He thinks about Stan. _If_ he can ever get back that Stan he had in the beach house two months ago. _Has_ Richie been dropped like dead weight? 

“I think I want to see my friends,” Richie says. “Set everything straight with them first.”

Pete smiles, warm and pleasant. “That’s not a bad idea, if you ask me.”

“I came out to Mike the other day, it was easier than I expected it would be.” It’s only when Pete nods, impressed, that Richie actually considers the weight of his casual announcement. Three months ago he would have sooner thrown himself into traffic than come out to Mike or anyone, let alone reference it as simply as he would doing his laundry. “I want that with the rest of them.” 

“I think that’s not a bad idea at all, Richie.”

xxxx

“So,” Richie introduces with no lead up whatsoever. “Turns out I have PTSD, most likely.”

They’re seated on an outdoor set of couches in the pedestrian only shopping street not too far a walk from the rehab house. A lot of the shops are predictably overpriced high-end stuff and tourist trappy stuff overlapping, but there’s a decent ice cream place they didn’t have to wait a year in line for. A girl nearby is playing violin, case on the ground at her feet. 

Mike would never say the words verbally, but the expression he makes at Richie screams _yeah, no shit_. 

“I didn’t believe it at first!” Richie shrugs, hands out, an exaggerated portrait of ‘ _how was I supposed to know?_ ’ “It’s not like the movies, you know? It’s not like I went to war or whatever.”

“Isn’t it?” Mike asks, face set into a serious line. 

It’s not entirely right, he supposes, to say that. He has been to war. He went to war before his voice had even dropped, forgot about it, and had to come back and fight that exact same war a second time. 

“Okay, okay, you’re right about that,” Richie concedes. “We both were, though, and aside from actual fucking aliens just like… getting my ass beat every day, getting chased down…”

“It lingers,” Mike says, and it hits Richie. 

Mike knows exactly what he’s talking about. He had it from Bowers just as bad as any of the Losers ever had, worse even, going through it alone in all the years before they adopted him as one of their own. Bowers terrorized them both, haunted Richie’s literal nightmares, but Mike… 

He can remember the rock war clearly now that his brain isn’t constantly muddled. How scared Mike had looked, Bowers with no intentions of holding back, murderous. They were just kids then and he already had it in him. 

Their eyes catch and they share a look, both of them knowing what the other is thinking without saying it. Maybe, Richie thinks, he isn’t the only one dealing with some lasting Henry Bowers trauma.

“I never- Before-” Mike pitter-patters his fingers against the table in an off-beat pattern. “I don’t want to- to thank you for what you had to do, but I want to thank you that you did it.”

Richie doesn’t know what to say to that. Part of him is afraid of what will happen if he tries to open his mouth. 

“I just… am glad to have you as a friend.” 

“Mike, what the fuck, dude.” Richie snorts a damp laugh. “Can we hang out one time where you don’t make me cry?” He’s not crying, really, but not far off. Pete says it’s something about finally feeling his emotions instead of drowning them out and it sucks. 

Mike laughs right back at him. 

“I love you, man, that’s all,” he says. He doesn’t look entirely dry-eyed himself. 

“Yeah, yeah.”

They sit together in a contented silence for a minute. Mike sips from his flimsy cup of coffee he insists tastes just fine. Richie has to call Bill’s hosting abilities into question again if Mike considers rehab house coffee to be ‘ _fine_ ‘.

“I’d rather have this, you know?” Richie finally breaks the afternoon quiet. Most people are inside at group therapy so the garden is still and empty. “Even though it comes with all the bad shit too. I’d rather remember it than forget you guys again.”

“Me too.” Mike nods over at him and Richie knows just how deeply he means it.

xxxx

With a plan in mind, even though it isn’t exactly as career-oriented as maybe Pete was aiming for when he brought it up, Richie gets to work. He goes through a dozen or more coming out speeches that he tries out on Pete until one day, a week later, Pete holds a hand up to bring him to a pause.

“This is all good,” he starts. “You’re speaking truthfully and I can tell you mean what you’re saying.”

“But?” Richie asks. It’s hanging there in the air between them, clear as day, a giant but. 

“But it’s sounding more and more like a stand-up routine and less like a conversation with a friend.” Pete gestures to get Richie to return to his seat from where he was pacing and talking. “I know it feels _safer_ that way, but think about Mike.”

It’s been weeks since Richie got irrationally angry, _petulant_ like a bratty kid, but he feels it in him again. It’s only because Pete sees right through him though, it’s aggravating, hitting the ‘stand-up as a defense mechanism’ nail right on its head. 

“What about Mike?” He asks. 

“Did you give a speech to Mike, or did you just talk to him face to face?” Pete folds a hand out, palm up, with each listed choice like he’s physically offering them out to Richie. He raises his left hand. “You had a conversation, and it went fine.”

“Yeah, but-”

“No yeah buts!” He says the words fast, _yabbuts_. “These guys are your friends.” Pete’s hands are back in his lap, relaxed. “They don’t want to listen to Trashmouth the comedian coming out, they’ll want to know what’s been going on with their _friend_ Richie.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Richie deflates a little in his chair.

“For what it’s worth though, it’s not bad stand-up material.” 

Richie takes what he said with him and considers it. He knows it’s true even if admitting it is annoying. Still, he saves all of his drafts and emails them to himself with the subject ‘ _material_ ’, just in case.

\----

About halfway through his final month, Richie has a lot more time to dedicate to his reintroduction to the rest of the world. For most this means apartment and job hunting, both things that rest in the back of Richie’s mind, but don’t weigh on him. His apartment is secure and he didn’t drink through _all_ of his savings. Mike hadn’t been exaggerating when he referenced the success of the Losers after leaving Derry, pre-onstage meltdown, Richie was selling out shows in major cities on the regular.

He can worry about those things once he’s repaired his relationships with the only people he’s ever really loved. 

He finally goes to see Bill at his fuck off house outside of Hollywood. Bill has a big circle balloon that says ‘ _It’s a Boy!_ ’ in a curling font in one hand when he meets them eagerly at the front door. 

“It’s all they had,” he explains. “I went to three different stores. I thought you’d think it’s funny.”

Richie can’t not laugh. He knows it’s cliche to say and most might not believe it, but he’s really never known anyone like Bill. 

Bill yanks him into a hug, stronger than he looks for as small as he is, smaller even than Eddie but broad, not a wiry little ball of runner’s muscle. He holds on tight to Richie, forcing him so he’s hunched over to hug him back properly. 

“I missed you, Richie.” Bill pulls away and his eyes are _already_ misty. 

He and Mike had joked about placing bets on how long it would take for Bill to cry, but it felt too cruel to actually go through with any of them.

“Yeah, I missed you too, dude.” He looks around the mostly-plain entryway of Bill’s house. He’s only seen it once before, since Bill more often would come to his apartment after Derry. It’s fairly plain, with an oversized potted palm and a few odd paintings to at least keep it away from _boring_. 

“Hey, can we-” Bill’s voice is quieter and, Richie notices, directed at Mike.

He jerks his head to the left which seems to mean something at least to Mike who nods and murmurs ‘ _of course_ ’. Mike steps away from Richies side and past Bill with a clapping grip to his shoulder, lingering until he’s stepped too far and his arm drops.

“C’mon.” Bill gestures for Richie to follow him, turning to lead him out to a backyard area.   
Audra and Bill are not quite ‘ _infinity pool overlooking the city_ ’ people, thankfully. There are ivy-covered walls around the yard that is so tastefully decorated it’s obvious the whole thing has been done by a gardener. 

“You look great!” They both sit on cushioned lounge chairs without actually lounging in them, sitting up and facing each other. “Mike told me you did, but it’s nice to see for myself.”

“Thanks.” Personally, Richie thinks he still kind of looks like shit, but a much nicer shit than he probably had the last time Bill saw him. 

Both of them start to speak at the same time, stumbling over each other awkwardly, stilted.

“I just need to say this,” Richie blurts out quickly. “Or I never will. I’m gay.”

Bill gawks.

“Just wanted you to know.” He tries as subtly as he can to wipe his sweating palms against the legs of his shorts. “What were you gonna say?”

“I was gonna say I’m happy for you, but I’m-” Bill stops to scrub his face and choke out a wet laugh. “Richie! I’m _so_ happy for you!”

“Ugh.” There’s only so much of Bill blubbering Richie can take before either he joins him or runs away. He lifts one arm out in invitation. “Come here.”

Bill does, springing from his seat toward Richie’s and wrapping him up in a hug.

“I’m proud of you, man.” Bill’s voice is muffled against Richie’s shoulder. He pulls away to be heard more clearly, wiping at his eyes and looking up at Richie. “For all of this, seriously.”

“Thanks, Bill.”

Hearing it means more than even Richie was expecting it to. It makes him glad he waited this long to see Bill properly, to show him a version of himself that _is_ better than the last time they saw each other, not just one who is on the way to being better. 

“I love you, dude, but you’re getting snot all over my shirt.” He’s not, they both know it, but it makes Bill laugh and scrub at his face again anyway.

“Shut up.” He sniffles hard. “I love you, too.”

He stays for dinner with Mike and Bill, Audra off to sit in on one of the million evening talk shows about something upcoming but apparently will be happy to hear that Richie is doing better. It’s nice that it’s just the three of them, in a way, a Losers-only half-reunion.

In bed that night Richie feels more settled than he can remember feeling in months.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> months ago when I initially wrote the notes for this au the only thing I wrote about bill was "richie comes out and bill cries like a big baby idiot" I'm so glad to have finally hit that part.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahh finally our boy is back I'm so happy to see him again

He sees Bill several more times before the end of his third month in rehab comes up. He finally gets to meet Audra officially, and she’s very similar to the Audra he saw at the beach. She jokes and chats with them over dinner and drags Mike away by his arm to help her with dishes after. 

Bill, out on his patio again, explains how good things have been between them lately. How strained things were after Derry (Richie remembers that much from Bill’s visits) until he broke down and told her everything. It’s hard to digest the thought that someone would tell their story and not end up locked up in a looney bin, but leave it to Bill to be the one. Mike was there, he says, visiting. He backed up every word of his story and then some, had the years of research under his belt to give her everything. 

She believes him about it. Confusing as that might be to Richie, she does, and it allowed Bill to work through things with her there with him. 

“I’m sorry you had to do it alone,” Bill says. “You shouldn’t have had to.”

“No, I- I know, you had a lot going on too.” He sees that, now, with the worst of it behind him. He wasn’t suffering alone, Bill and Mike had their own struggles, and it would no longer come as a shock to find the other Losers had too. “It still felt like, I don’t know.”

He doesn’t want to say it, doesn’t want to hurt Bill and he knows it will. But Bill asks. “Like what?”

“Like you gave up.” Bill’s lip actually wobbles at Richie’s words. He rushes to continue. “I know that’s not it, Mike explained a lot. Plus _I’m_ the one that locked you out and ignored you.”

“I wanted to rip your door off its hinges.” Bill laughs, snotty and gross and watery-eyed. 

It makes Richie laugh, too. Part of him had suspected, known that Bill isn’t the type to just stop trying, but it’s nice to hear. He knows it was all his own mind working against him, convincing him he’s a burden, not worth the effort. 

“Guys,” Mike calls through the screen door, backlit by a warm hall light. He looks so at home here, somehow, wandering around in socked feet. “Dinner.”

Bill jumps out of his seat, Richie not far behind, to head inside. Mike waits for them at the door, sliding it open for them both. Bill squeezes past, hand on Mike’s waist, always so touchy. 

“Richie?” Audra asks. She stops to kiss a red-eyed Bill on the forehead where he’s already sitting at the table. “Can you help grab the food?”

He follows her into the kitchen, dutifully stacking plates and silverware together. He asks about her work, what’s next for her big plans, if she’s currently filming. 

“I might be in Alaska shooting for a while next Spring,” she tells him as they reenter the dining room. “Some crime drama, I think.”

“Mike just mentioned going to Alaska, too!” Richie looks between them, smiling. 

“Is that right, Mike?” Audra asks. 

“I was thinking about it,” Mike answers. “Yeah. I’ve never been.”

“Bill,” Richie stage-whispers across the table. “I think Mike is gonna run away with your wife.”

Bill chokes on the water he’d just swallowed and Mike laughs. 

“Bill will be there!” Audra’s laugh is sweet, charming when it reaches her eyes. It’s not surprising Bill fell for her and fought hard to get to keep her. 

Another time at dinner, a downright obscene array of takeout from a local Chinese place (no fortune cookies please) thrown together to celebrate Richie’s upcoming graduation from rehab, Bill lets his first Loser Update slip through. It was something they agreed upon, they could let Eddie, Bev, and Ben know that Richie is doing okay, but he wants to update them on everything face to face. He misses them, but it will feel much better to have the conversations they need to have in person. In turn, he gets no updates on their lives either. Fair’s fair. 

Audra is casually talking about someone she worked with on her last film and the messy divorce they’re going through.

“It’ll be worth it,” Bill suggests. “Eddie’s divorce was a mess too and look at him.”

Richie chokes so hard he’s pretty sure he now permanently has rice stuck in his sinus cavities. He has to cough several times before he can speak, and when he does his voice is raspy and sore. “Eddie’s _WHAT_?” 

“Oh shit,” Bill says. “Nothing, I didn’t say anything.”

“Eddie got a divorce?” Richie asks.

“No.” Bill shakes his head, looking to Mike and Audra both for help, neither of whom deliver. “Who’s Eddie?” 

“Nice, Bill,” Mike says. Audra’s face is buried in her hands, shoulders shaking with laughter. 

They agree to both pretend that Bill didn’t let anything slip, and Eddie doesn’t have to know, but that doesn’t mean Richie forgets about it. Quite the opposite. It’s all he can think about. Eddie is divorced. He left his wife to set off on his own in New York. Holy shit.

He doesn’t want to dive headfirst into anything, but it almost feels like… a chance. The thought keeps him awake at night, staring at the ceiling thinking about what he should tell Eddie.

xxxx

He talks to Pete about his ordeal. They have a “ _remember my friend Eddie who was impaled and almost died in front of me well I just found out he got a divorce after his near death experience and also I’m in love with him and freaking out a little bit about this_ ” chat together.

His very last week in rehab seems like maybe not the ideal moment to bring it up for the first time, but no one has ever accused Richie of having good timing. 

Pete doesn’t have much to offer. Well, he does, but it’s not what Richie wants. Richie wants a step-by-step instruction booklet available in 13 languages titled _What to Do When You Are in Love with Your Childhood Best Friend_. Instead Pete tells him he’s happy Richie is being honest with himself, but ultimately the decision to tell Eddie or not is a call only he can make. 

“I don’t want to make that call,” Richie whines. “I want him to read my mind and know.”

Pete snorts. “Yeah, it’s scary, but everyone does it eventually.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah!” Pete yells, enthused. “When I first asked my wife out on a date, I was so nervous it was disgusting, but it was worth all of it.”

It’s funny but it doesn’t do much to offer comfort. He still has to decide if and _how_ to say something when he sees Eddie. Living alone Eddie. Divorced Eddie. 

The thought moves permanently into his brain. Does Eddie live in a bachelor pad in, shit, he doesn’t know the hip parts of NYC. Then again, he thinks, if it’s hip why would Eddie be living there? Did his wife take everything and he’s living in a dump with five other roommates? Is he out hooking up with younger women? Men?? The last thought sends him into a feverish spiral, leaving him so distracted even Claire comments on his looking more spaced than usual. 

He knows he’s going to see Eddie next of all the Losers. If only a week alone with the knowledge that Eddie is divorced sends him to the brink of insanity he knows he can’t wait any longer than that. 

xxxx

Shiny new orange three month token in hand, Richie leaves the little rehab house in Santa Monica behind for good. It feels weirdly huge and minor at the same time. It’s just a Thursday, he’s going to get burgers with Mike after he leaves and pick up some more appropriately bougie food for Bill and Audra so they can all eat together again later.

It hits him at the door. He won’t be seeing Claire anymore, or Liam quietly and grouchily tidying the living room space. No more puzzles with Beth, though they do trade numbers at least so they can talk. No more Pete, instead a referral for a therapist he trusts named _Randall_ of all things.

He doesn’t cry, only Mike can make him cry and no one else is allowed, but it’s bittersweet. He would never say it out loud, not when it sounds so cheesy even just in his head, but he feels like a different person entirely. He’s not like, _fixed_ , obviously, but he feels so _free_. Fear gripped him for, well, most of his life, but really had complete control over him for the past year since Derry. And it’s not there. 

Instead, he’s eager. Ready to go, ready to fuck off and buy his plane ticket that night to face a different kind of fear entirely. Not nauseating, not making him want to hide under a rock, a tameable fear. 

Adam calls him with congratulations on the way with Mike back to Bill’s place, back seat full of take out.

“So, what’s next?” He asks.

“I’m gonna take some time,” Richie answers. “Personal shit.”

“Right.” Adam doesn’t sound doubtful, but he’s never known Richie to ever have _personal shit_. He was an easy client, believe it or not. No real family, no real friends, nothing but the job at the end of the day. 

“You’re still fired, by the way.” Richie twists to try to grab one of the bags of food, big plans to steal a handful of fries before they get home. He’s stopped by Mike slapping his arm, not even looking away from the road. 

“I know, asshole.” He can see the expression on Adam’s face in his mind. Maybe supporting the case that they were together too long, some professional relationships need to be changed up eventually. “If you’re on the market again though, let me know, I’ll throw your name around.”

“Yeah, thanks.” He means it. Being a dick or not, Richie is thankful for Adam at the end of the day. 

“Shit.” There’s a commotion in the background. “I’m with another- a client on set, I gotta go.”

The call ending tone sounds before either of them get a chance to say bye, just like Adam always did, always in a big rush.

\----

Audra isn’t the type of vegetarian to be judgemental about other peoples’ eating habits, and Richie is thankful. After three months of subpar food with only a few recent forays into the realm of actual good food, Richie just wants to eat his double double animal style without a surrounding air of condescension. 

They’re all seated around a table outside together at the first moments of dark, the sky painted blue and purple low over the horizon. The weather is nice, dry, the sound of the ocean is there but distant. If he wasn’t so used to it he might think it was incoming thunder. 

“Do you need anything for your place?” Bill asks between bites of his own food. “Groceries or anything?”

“Nah.” It’s a kind thought, and one he might need some help with in the future, but not now. “I’m gonna leave like, tomorrow if I can.”

“Leave?” Bill sits up straight suddenly, looking alarmed. “Leave where?”

Richie drops his food in front of him, licking some sauce from his fingers and clearing his throat. 

“I’m heading off on the Great Sobriety, Apology, and Coming Out Tour Across America!” He moves his hand in front of him miming a large billboard or sign, bouncing with each word. 

“Tour?” Audra asks. “I thought you were taking a comedy break?”

“Not that kind of tour,” Richie corrects her. He ignores that the implication of her misunderstanding—coming out publicly —makes him feel a little clammy all over at just the thought. “I’m gonna visit the other Losers, see what they’re up to, you know. Have our big talks in person.”

“I think that’s a good idea!” Mike smiles at him across the table. “Who first?”

“I dunno.” Richie shrugs like it hasn’t been the one and only thought in his mind for a week. “I wanna see Eddie’s dumpy bachelor pad.”

“It’s not that bad!” Mike throws a balled-up napkin at Richie, Bill and Audra both laughing warmly. 

“Do we at least get to warn him you’re coming?” Richie knows Mike and Bill both have been relaying some information about Richie to the rest of the Losers, but he doesn’t know exactly what. Not the major things, for sure, it makes his skin itch a little to not know if they’ve talked about his crying episodes or the weight from all of his drinking he’s only just started losing. He trusts them, though, always. 

“I don’t see where the fun in that is,” Richie replies. “Just send me his address?”

Bill does, and Richie eventually goes back to his dinky K-Town apartment with a flight to New York booked for the next afternoon. He packs his duffle bag full, gets stressed and empties it and repacks everything again before crawling into bed. It’s not anxiety keeping him up, but it’s not exactly excitement either. He doesn’t know what it is, but it has him buzzing in his skin. 

He must manage, eventually, because he opens his eyes again and the sun is out and in no time at all he’s on his way to the airport.

xxxx

It’s Saturday evening by the time Richie knocks on the door of Eddie’s apartment, no less than twelve conversations ready to play out that he mentally rehearsed over and over in the long cab ride from the airport. (At least three of them are dramatic love confessions that he knows he won’t break out right away.) An oh-so-helpful neighbor on their way out held the building door open for Richie, and he snooped through the various mailboxes until he found one labeled _Kaspbrak_.

He’s still fucking with the jammed zipper on his duffle bag when the door opens.

“Someone left the front door propped open with a rock,” he says. “You should write a note about how irrespons-” 

His words break when he looks up. The man holding the door open isn’t Eddie, he’s a bit shorter than Richie with cropped dark hair, staring at him in confusion. 

“Oh shit, sorry.” Richie’s eyes bounce back to the door with a big number 8 secured to the front. “I checked the mailboxes, but I must have the wrong place.”

The man opens his mouth to say something, but they’re interrupted by another voice from inside.

“Is that Andy coming back for his-” the voice gets louder as it trails into the room, and then stops altogether. “Richie!”

Over the man’s shoulder is Eddie, wide-eyed and frozen in place mid-step, looking like a miniature gym rat bigfoot. He sparks into action in a heartbeat, rushing forward and throwing his arms around Richie’s shoulders in a tight hug. 

Richie hugs back just as tight, completely unwilling to let go. Eddie feels so solid under his hands.

“What are you doing here?” Eddie asks, right next to his ear.

They finally pull apart, Eddie smiling up at him looking shell-shocked. His hair is soft and wild without product the way Richie knows it gets just after he’s showered. Richie feels like he’ll feel the warmth of Eddie’s hug for the rest of his life.

“Well I got out of the clink and I need a place to stay,” Richie says. Finally his attention is drawn to the mystery man again standing at the door, looking wide eyed and out of place.

Eddie rolls his eyes but is already pulling Richie’s bag off of his shoulder. “You weren’t in _jail_. And why would you need a place to stay on the other side of the country?”

“Congraaatulations!” Richie speaks into an invisible microphone, TV game show grand prize announcer voice in full force. “You’re next in line on the Great American Richie Tozier Apology Tour!”

“Richie, I-” Eddie doesn’t sound exasperated exactly, but something right on the verge. “Oh! This is my friend, Richie,” he says to the man at the door. He turns back to Richie, face weirdly tense, hand waving out to the man as if presenting him. “Richie, this is Trevor, my… boyfriend.”

His hesitance is barely perceptible, but Richie notices it. A half-second stutter before the word boyfriend. He wonders if the other Losers know, but at the same time he’s too busy schooling his face into something acceptable to care if they know or not. Everything in him wants to throw a giant toddler fit at this turn. He’s too late, someone got there first. And, insult to injury, his name’s fucking _Trevor_.

“Nice to meet you.” Richie smiles politely at Trevor and accepts his offered handshake, wishing he had another suitcase as an excuse to not have to.

“You’re a comedian, right?” Trevor asks. “I saw you in a movie, I think.”

“Uh, yup!” Richie nods as Eddie leads them all back into his place. “I’ve been a few of those. So this is it, huh? The bachelor, well-” he gestures lamely toward Trevor. “The recently divorced pad?”

“Yeah, I guess.” Eddie replies. He drops Richie’s bag next to a large couch in the living room space, facing a nice looking fireplace with a TV hanging above it. “How is it?”

“Pretentious.” It is, all white and big windows and fake wooden floors. 

Eddie snorts. “Yeah, well it’s Greenwich.” 

Trevor looks amused. 

“Did you just get here?” Eddie asks. “Are you hungry, do you need a shower? It’s late, but some places might still deliver if we call.”

He’s anxious, it’s in his posture, his tense smile, the rapid speed of his words and how he’s flitting around the apartment tidying things that aren’t messes. Trevor stands with an elbow leaning on a half circle breakfast table next to the tiny open kitchen, watching him curiously. 

“Relax,” Richie assures him. “I won’t rob you of your beauty sleep. I just need a shower and a horizontal surface to sleep on.”

“You really didn’t get a hotel?” Trevor asks. He looks shaken when Eddie looks at him shocked. “I just mean… you can afford one… that’s all.”

“He doesn’t need a hotel.” Eddie is responding to Trevor, technically, but he’s looking at Richie like he’s daring him to be stupid enough to suggest going to get a room too. “The couch pulls out.”

“Yeah?” Eddie nods. “Well I don’t!”

Trevor laughs and Eddie groans a loud pained and disgusted sound, shoving two-handed at Richie’s side. “Go!” He nudges again. “Bathroom’s that way.”

He can hear the low murmuring of conversation behind a closed door when he exits the bathroom, feeling cleaned of the nasty recycled plane air that was clinging to him before. He ignores it, trying hard not to imagine what’s going on on the other side of the door, and goes back to the living room. 

The couch bed is already made up with blue striped sheets, and the lights are all off except for a lamp in the kitchen he can’t figure out how to turn off, so he turns his back to it when he lays down. It’s dim and easy to ignore. He sends off a message to Bill and Mike that he’s arrived and kindly doesn’t yell at them about Trevor in case they _don’t_ know, and he’s asleep before they even reply. 

It’s hard to tell how much time has passed when he’s woken up again, but it’s still night. Probably not even an hour, just enough that he feels groggy and confused. There’s talking again, but it almost hits his ears like they’re adults in Charlie Brown, unidentifiable noise. Then a ‘ _yeah, bye_ ’ followed by the all too identifiable noise of kisses and the closing and locking of the door. 

Richie wants to evaporate into the atmosphere and never come back. 

Eddie shuffles behind the couch and into the kitchen, filling a glass of water and staying there. Richie can’t see him but he can hear him shifting and swallowing and pattering his fingers against his glass. 

“Do you have a cat?” Richie asks. He can hear Eddie startle and swear softly. “Or is the litter box in your bathroom yours?”

“I have a cat.” He doesn’t even have to see Eddie to know the expression on his face. “He’s sleeping in my room.”

“What’s his name?” Richie still hasn’t sat up.

“Kermit,” Eddie says.

Richie hums and falls quiet, trying to decide between faking sleep or saying more. 

“You didn’t have to kick your boyfriend out,” he says eventually. He sits up enough to peek over the couch at Eddie looking soft and sleep-ready. 

“He’s fine,” Eddie says. “I told him how long it’s been since we saw each other.”

He approaches the couch and Richie has the gut reaction to expect him to come and sit close, slide a hand into his hair. He doesn’t, of course, and Richie stamps down his disappointment. _That_ wasn’t really Eddie and he can’t expect Eddie to act like he did in some dream he had. Instead he sits near Richie’s feet and pulls his legs up to wrap his arms around his knees.He’s in some soft-looking pajama pants and a t-shirt, both completely plain but somehow looking dressed up next to Richie’s tattered decade old sweatpants. 

“How long’ve you been dating?” He doesn’t know why he asks like an idiot who is actively trying to hurt himself. 

“A couple months,” Eddie answers. 

“How’d you meet?” He’s curious, genuinely. How does Eddie Kaspbrak date? What’s it like? Does Trevor appreciate how lucky he is? 

Eddie looks embarrassed, unexpectedly, which means it’s something hilarious. It makes Richie sit up a little straighter, guessing game initiated. 

“Oooh, what was it? Grindr?” He asks. 

“No!” Eddie’s face is already deep red. 

“Bar hookup?”

“No.”

“Your ex-wife introduced you.”

“Oh my god,” Eddie groans like this is the worst possibility. “No. We met at Jamba Juice.”

“Jamba-!” Richie can’t even finish his exclamation, head thrown back and laughing too hard to speak. Laughing too hard to make any sound, just an endless wheeze. He laughs until he collapses back onto the bed on his side, limbs weak with lack of air. 

“Shut the fuck up.” Eddie kicks out against one of his legs. 

“Did they give him your kale super juice by mistake?” Richie wheezes. “Did you complain to the manager?”

“Shut up!” Eddie yells louder, but he’s laughing despite his visible efforts not to. He eventually calms himself and falls quiet. He glances at Richie just briefly. “You’re okay with it? Trevor and everything?”

He’s not, obviously. Not in the way Eddie’s afraid of, but in the way that it feels like the carpet’s just been pulled out from under his feet. That tentative little taste of hope he’d had in Santa Monica ripped away and leaving him… just sad.

“Of course I am,” he says instead. “I know big comedian Trashmouth might look the type, but I’m not a homophobe.”

“No. I didn’t think you would be.” Even still, Eddie looks relieved. 

“Do the Losers know?” He’s still curled up on his side where he fell laughing, arms around his folded In half pillow, looking over at Eddie. 

In the dark of the fancy New York apartment, Richie feels _comfortable_. More than he imagined he would have been, considering everything. Things aren’t stilted or stressful, he’s just… ‘ _relieved to be here with you guys_ ‘ he remembers himself saying in Derry, before it all fell apart. It’s the same now, the same at dinner with Bill and Mike and Audra. He’s relieved. No fear judgement from a fellow Loser. 

“They know I’m gay. I told them basically as soon as I got divorced.” He says it so easily, it makes Richie proud. “They don’t know I’m dating yet.”

“Shit, dude.” Richie rubs a hand over his eyes. “I can’t believe I missed you getting divorced _and_ coming out like a dickhead.”

“You didn’t miss much.” He rolls his eyes. “A lot of freaking out, you might’ve been better off.”

“I definitely wasn’t,” Richie points out in a playful tone. 

“Oh, fuck.” Eddie’s eyes finally snap back to meet Richie’s, eyebrows pulled up in worry giving him the biggest puppy dog look he’s ever seen. “That was really insensitive, shit, I-“

Richie stops his stressed rambling with a raised hand. “Relax, Eds. I’m joking, it’s fine.”

He’s not mad or even annoyed, it’s just true. Listening to Eddie whine about divorce lawyers or whatever would have been like a vacation in paradise compared to what he was doing before rehab. 

Eddie breathes out a heavy woosh of air. “I’m glad you’re okay now.” He curls forward, arms on his knees and chin on his arms. “You are okay, right?”

“Just peachy!” He isn’t as animated as he would normally be, still fog-brained from being woken up, ready to fall back to sleep at any moment. “Have the badge of honor and everything to prove it.” He waves in the general direction of where Eddie parked his bag earlier. “I’ll show you tomorrow.”

Eddie moves to stand when Richie yawns wide. “Okay, Rich, well. Good night.” He starts to shuffle away, Richie’s eyes already closing again. He stops once, turning back around. “Thanks, by the way.”

Richie grunts his response, mustering up the energy for a highly supportive ‘ _uh-huh_ ‘.

xxxx

Eddie is either atrociously bad at moving quietly or he doesn’t give a shit that Richie is still sleeping on his couch. He’s banging around in his kitchen at - Richie checks his phone - nine in the morning. 

He doesn’t even have the decency to look apologetic when Richie grumbles at him over the top of the couch.

“I’ve been sitting awake in my room for an hour and a half, get over it,” he says. “Coffee?”

“M’please.” 

Kermit finally appears with a loud yowling at Eddie’s ankles, walking daintily around like he owns the place. He’s puffy with long grey fur and accepts a scratch behind the ears from Eddie’s left hand as his right dumps food into the little dish on the floor. 

Seated on uncomfortable stools at the tall round table he tells Eddie his great success story over breakfast. At least, he tells him a summarized version of it anyway, he doesn’t need all of the nasty little details. He tells him about Pete, though, and Anthony who he still hasn’t heard from since he left the house, and Claire. 

“It seems like it was really helpful?” Eddie prompts when he finishes looking over his little orange three month token. 

“Yeah, dude,” Richie agrees. “They therapied the shit out of me.”

Eddie tips his mostly emptied mug of coffee at him. “Welcome to the club.”

“That’s part of why I’m here, actually,” Richie says. This is the awkward part, the heartfelt no jokes touchy-feely part. Though it is Eddie, so it’s a lot less likely to be touchy-feely than it was with Mike and Bill. “You know, there was a lot of talk about _closure_ and stuff…”

“Yeah.” Eddie must sense the change in Richie too, gone just as quiet and serious. He leans forward in his seat just a bit.

“I’ve been pretty shitty, this past year,” Richie starts. He’s thankful when Eddie doesn’t try to interrupt him with loud assurances, letting him speak. “I cut myself off from all of you and just ignored you. Not the greatest way for a friend to act.”

“Maybe.” Eddie shrugs. “I understand the instinct though. For a while I just thought… maybe you were going back to life before Derry without all of us.”

Richie tries to laugh, but it comes out weak. “For a while I thought if I tried hard enough I could. I hated it.”

“Me too,” Eddie agrees with serious eyes. 

“I’m just-” Richie fiddles endlessly with his fork, twirling and flipping and tapping it. “Here to apologize, mostly, for running away.”

Eddie looks thoughtful, big cow eyes bouncing all over Richie’s face silently.

“Also I’m gay.” He rushes on before Eddie can interrupt. “It was supposed to be a big announcement when I showed up but you really knocked the wind out of my sails, huh?”

Those big cow eyes go even wider, always expressive eyebrows shooting up toward his neatly brushed hairline. “You’re _what_?” 

“Most people say, like, apology accepted or whatever,” Richie pushes. Be stupid, be annoying, don’t get hung up on this. 

“You don’t have to apologize,” Eddie snaps sharply. “But I accept it.”

The relief him saying that brings is unexpected. He knew Eddie would be fine, of course, he never would have flown here with no hotel booked and barged in if he thought Eddie would reject him, he’s not _that_ self-destructive. Losers don’t just give up on each other. They didn’t after a couple decades of forgetting each other entirely and they wouldn’t after one year of a rough patch. 

Still, though, it’s nice to hear put into words. 

“But what the fuck?!” Eddie keeps going, louder. “You didn’t say anything yesterday other than ‘I’m not homophobic’.”

“Well I’m not!” Richie’s pitch climbs and climbs, then falls flat at Eddie’s annoyed face. “I don’t know, dude, that was your moment, I didn’t want to step on it.”

Eddie looks shell-shocked for a long time. His expression turns almost gleeful.

“Does this mean I can tell you your stage persona is fucking disgusting?” Richie groans, slouching heavily into his chair. Eddie continues on as if he hears nothing. “It’s the worst, Richie! I hate my girlfriend jokes, in 2017? Come on, man.”

He looks exactly like he fucking did as a kid when he was yelling at Richie, yelling at any of them really, screeching about safety hazards and statistics and how annoying they were being. Genuinely angry, half of the time, but like he’s having _fun_ yelling. Richie can see it in the shine of his eyes, pulling at his dimples, he loves this. An Olympic gold medalist in the sport of being indignant. Too cute to really hold any sort of real threat. 

“Are you done?” Richie asks. 

“No!” Eddie shouts, but he betrays himself by almost laughing. “You’re actually funny, you know that? That’s what makes it even worse, you asshole. Telling someone else’s jokes about jerking off on stage.”

“So you watched me?” It’s not the biggest victory in the face of a yelling Eddie, but it’s something he can throw back. It’s satisfying and funny, at least. 

Eddie visibly droops, caught out in the truth. He regains himself though, right back to the proper energy level. “I saw one of your shows on TV and hated it. Myra and I talked about it for a week. I don’t know why you-!”

“I fired them,” Richie interrupts.

Of all things, this is the one that gets the biggest reaction out of Eddie. He jolts like he’s been slapped, shocked quiet. 

“I fired the writers, my agent, everyone.” He’s not sure how to follow up a statement like that. He briefly considers jazz hands but the moment passes and he’s spent it sitting there looking at Eddie across the table. 

“Wow,” Eddie says plainly. “I mean, you just quit it all?”

“Yup.” Richie nods. He knows it sounds insane. It _feels_ insane. “You’re looking at a freshly unemployed Hollywood washup.”

“Shit.” Eddie sounds shocked stupid. “Is that why you came to New York? You need a couch to sleep on?”

“Fuck no, dude, I hate New York.” Richie frowns, playing it up for their familiar back and forth, he calls Richie names and he does it back. “Why can’t you live somewhere respectable?”

“Like where?” Eddie challenges, already annoyed, rising immediately to the bait.

Does he know it’s bait? He has to, right?

“Like where?” He asks again, daring him. 

“I dunno.” Richie shrugs. “Baltimore.”

Eddie reacts like Richie just suggested he rip his own arm off and eat his fingers one by one. He looks completely repulsed. “ _Baltimore_?!”

“I don’t know!” Richie shouts back. “It’s the first thing I thought of. New York sucks.”

Eddie rolls his eyes like the condescending asshole he is. “Because LA is _so_ much nicer.”

“At least we have sun,” Richie defends. 

It’s creeping up on ten in the morning already and there’s barely any sun pushing through the grey clouds outside even though it’s summer, humid and nasty already.

They gradually finish their cooling drinks at a sedate pace. Richie misses the days of Eddie mindlessly reaching over and stealing his cup to drink from, and then promises himself to _stop_ thinking about it so much. Stop missing something that wasn’t real. _This_ is real, and it’s good. It’s Eddie. 

Kermit finishes eating too, padding around satisfied. Eddie only spares him a glance when Richie reaches one long arm to the side of his chair and makes noises to call him over. 

Instead of running toward his ankles for pets, Kermit turns his back with all the haughtiness an eleven pound predator that poops in a box can manage. 

Richie sighs in disappointment. “Should’ve known he’d be an asshole like his dad.”

“I’m not his dad,” Eddie corrects him. “And he’s not an asshole.”

“Yeah he is, he’s pointing it at me right now!” Richie gestures where Kermit is, indeed, still pointedly ignoring him. “That’s cat for ‘ _fuck you_ ’.” 

Eddie hangs his own arm down and Kermit toddles over in a big rush, preening and rubbing into his knuckles. Richie _tsks_. 

“Why Kermit?” Richie asks.

“The shelter was calling him Jojo and I needed to think of something on the spot,” Eddie says. He doesn’t look up from where he’s paying attention to Kermit. “His full name is Kermit as Bob Cratchit.” 

Richie doesn’t have a full blown spit take, but he comes dangerously close. Jesus, Eddie is the funniest person he knows. “ _Why!?_ ”

“It was close to Christmas!” Eddie finally looks up. “I just remembered I liked that movie and rewatched it, it was on my mind.”

“I like it.” Richie nods his approval. “He’s still an asshole though.”

——

In the afternoon Eddie drags him out into the busy streets of Greenwich and to his local farmer’s market with a giant empty bag slung over his shoulder. Several blocks with rows of hastily built tents lined up and stocked to overflowing with fresh foods. 

“I always go on Sundays,” Eddie explained from where he crouched in front of his door tying his shoes. “You’re coming too, we’ll get lunch after.”

There was no room left for argument, so there Richie is, staring at a large tent selling something called ‘Ugly Vegetables’. He doesn’t even have the energy to ask.

The damp heat reminds him of exactly why he doesn’t like New York in the summer, he’s sweating through his short sleeved shirt by the time they get there. 

“Man, I thought LA was snobby,” he comments after a while of watching Eddie stuff his bag with a downright absurd amount of radishes. Do people even eat radishes? Like for real? 

“Don’t make me hit you.” Eddie again doesn’t even look up at him, like insulting him doesn’t even call for his full attention. “Maybe if you called ahead like a normal person I would’ve gone yesterday.”

His voice holds no venom and Richie knows he isn’t actually mad, but he also knows there’s a kernel of truth in there. Maybe not even a truth Eddie realizes he’s expressing. 

“Maybe I should have…” Richie stares at a multicolored display of carrots like his life depends on it.

None of the other Losers know Eddie is dating anyone, and Richie just kind of busted in on them and found out before Eddie was ready to share. If he had called ahead, Trevor wouldn’t have been there, it would have sucked a lot less too… finding out by having it thrown right in front of him…

“I’m not mad you showed up.” He doesn’t even need to look at Eddie to know how exasperated he looks. 

“No, I know.” Richie finally stops looking at a white carrot that may or may not be a daikon to follow Eddie to the next table. “Still, though.”

They’re both quiet while Eddie looks carefully at a table full of strawberries

After they move on, passing by a bunch of tables without stopping, Eddie speaks again.

“My therapist wants me to work on being kinder with my words.” Eddie delivers this like it’s an embarrassment or something, like he hates saying it so bluntly. “So, I’m glad you’re here, okay?”

“You could use some more practice,” Richie replies. 

Eddie groans and runs a hand through his hair, tugging some of the strands in a fist. “Don’t make me take it back.”

It makes Richie laugh, he can’t help it, it’s just so easy. He knows Eddie’s buttons like the back of his hand and Eddie never fails to react exactly like Richie wants him to. It’s almost comforting, in a way. Familiar. 

“She only said it because she’s never met _you_ ,” Eddie says.

\----

They grab lunch at a nearby pizza place. It’s not even the good kind of New York pizza place, kind of grimy and messy, because it’s still in the middle of Eddie’s yuppie neighborhood. The pizza is good, but is New York pizza really good if you aren’t left wondering not _if_ there are roaches in the building, but _how many_? 

Richie does concede to Eddie that it’s good food though, to Eddie’s smug satisfaction. 

“Don’t get cocky,” Richie pushes. “Just because it has one good thing doesn’t make New York not suck.”

He gets a vengeful glare from another pizza-eating guy, easily a decade younger than both of them. His glare is severely undercut by the fact that he’s wearing boat shoes. Richie is wearing a shirt with dolphins on it and this guy thinks he will be affected by his boat shoes judgement. 

“I’m going to murder you,” Eddie grumbles. “In real life. I’m going to strangle you.”

While Eddie isn’t wearing boat shoes, his own threats are fairly weakened by his dimples and the mirth in his eyes. This is his idea of fun, the weirdo.

“Eddie.” Richie clutches one hand to his chest. “Those aren’t very kind words.”

Eddie continues to grumble, too low to make out the words, but his jaw goes tense with how hard he’s clenching his teeth. “No one would convict me,” he finally says. “They’d give me a trophy.”

When the pizza comes they do manage to actually stop arguing long enough to eat it, believe it or not. Richie knows when to stop and how not to push Eddie far enough that they both get kicked out of the too-clean pizza shop. 

“So how long do you plan on staying?” Eddie asks, meticulously wiping grease from his fingers even though he still has another slice on his plate. 

“Iunno,” Richie garbles with his mouth full of cheese. “Didn’t buy a return ticket.”

“How much forethought did you exercise before you bought your ticket here?” Eddie looks deeply skeptical.

“Like five seconds.” Richie finally swallows his food so Eddie will stop looking at him like he’s a human slug. “I bought my ticket like-” he rolls his eyes up to do the mental math “-six hours after I was out?” 

“Six!” Eddie’s eyes bug wildly. He looks like one of those little dogs with eyes like grapes stuck on the sides of their heads. “Six hours?”

“Yeah!” Richie shrugs all fake nonchalance. “I already knew I was doing my big Losers tour before I finished up, so why wait?”

Eddie bobs his head in a strange little wobbly agreement. “I guess that’s fair.”

They finally walk back to Eddie’s together at a lazy pace. Richie carries the oversized bag of vegetables because he can sometimes be useful and nice, and figures it’s only fair since Eddie is both feeding and housing him at the moment. 

They’re quiet. Richie doesn’t even take any jabs at Eddie’s stupid neighborhood (even when it really deserves it). It’s peaceful.

“Can I ask something? You don’t have to answer.” Eddie breaks the silence and doesn’t wait for Richie to answer before continuing. “Did you feel like we wouldn’t care if you talked to us? Before?”

“Not really.” Richie wishes desperately he had jacket pockets to shove his hands into. Instead he adjusts the bag strap on his shoulder, fingers wrapping around it tight. “It’s hard to explain.

“When I got home I was so messed up, I couldn’t stop thinking about everything, you know?”

“I know.” Eddie rubs one hand over his chest idly, like he’s not even thinking about it. 

“I didn’t think you did.” Eddie shoots him a puzzled look but says nothing, allows him to continue. “Everyone just went home or off to better things, I figured you were going back to some perfect straight marriage.”

Eddie snorts loudly, obnoxiously. It’s too cute for as nasty and indelicate it is, possibly made cuter _because_ of how indelicate it is.

“Yeah well I know _now_.” Richie rolls his eyes, knows Eddie won’t take offense that he does. “Still, at least you faced your problems instead of drowning them out. I’m not just saying that to compare us, like, really, it’s good.”

“Yeah, I-” Eddie looks… shy? His cheeks flush just a little. “It’s not like it was easy. Well, the divorce was easy, after that…”

“Ooh, what? Did you lose the tasteful Sedan to the ex?” Richie jokes. 

“ _No_.” Eddie grumbles, But looks suspiciously shifty eyed. Richie waits. Richie would wait forever. “She got the book club, I got the steam mop.”

Richie cackles. 

“Shut up!” Eddie crosses his arms over his chest, a big huff, then drops them to his sides again. “I mean coming out wasn’t easy, and it took months for me to even look at a guy.”

Richie hums, only a little breathless from laughing.

“Then moving took forever-“ Eddie sighs like he’s annoyed at himself. “The bathrooms were never right.”

He’d been in Eddie’s bathroom and didn’t see anything special in there. There wasn’t a giant massaging bathtub or heated floors, it was just a normal bathroom. He must look confused because Eddie elaborates. 

“The mirror-“ he gestures, mocking up a sink vanity in front of him. “Perpendicular to the door.”

It is perpendicular, he remembers now that it’s been pointed out to him. The door won’t be behind you when you’re at the sink. It’s also a trifolding mirror, one that doesn’t need to be opened completely. 

Richie never did get the full story of how Eddie got the scar on his face (it’s pinker here than it was in Palm Springs, fresher), but he knows it happened in the townhouse bathroom. Thinking about it makes him glad Bowers is dead. It wasn’t only Mike he tried to take that day.

Eddie thinks about it every time he’s in a bathroom. Had to search for a new home over and over until he found a bathroom that didn’t bring the thought of that day back to him. 

“So how many real estate agents did you go through?” 

Eddie’s mouth pinches and his nose wrinkles, annoyed because Richie is right, he can see it in his eyes. 

“Three,” he mumbles. “Fuck off.”

He can play stern all he wants, Richie sees him laughing right along with him a second later. 

xxxx

Monday morning has Eddie loudly banging around in his kitchen again, feeding Kermit and throwing coffee together. When Richie sits up, he sees that he’s wearing a proper button-up shirt over the pajama shorts he was wearing last night.

“Hey, sorry,” he says over the sound of running water. “I took the day off, but I have some work to do this morning. I’ll be in my room. Help yourself to whatever.”

Then he’s gone. Richie can hear him from the end of the hall when he waddles unsteadily to the bathroom, muttering to himself and tip-tapping at a keyboard. 

At first he tries to go back to sleep, it’s not too early, but early enough that he could and it wouldn’t throw off his entire sleep schedule. It doesn’t happen, and in no time he finds himself fucking around on his phone. He redownloads Twitter, deletes it again, and then downloads it again, just letting it sit there. He doesn’t sign in and instead tries to beat his personal bests at one of the half dozen puzzle games he has on there.

Mike texting him another picture from his California lifestyle (a picture of the sunrise through a big wide window, big mug on a table in front of him, Bill’s house if Richie had to guess) saves him from needing to distract himself. He picks up and presses call immediately. 

“Hey Rich,” Mike answers after the first ring. “How’s New York?”

“Disgusting,” Richie answers to the static breathy sound of a laugh. “I don’t know which is worse, the pissy subways or Eddie’s yuppie neighborhood.”

“Come on, man.” Mike’s words waver with the laugh he’s fighting back. “It’s not that bad.”

“It _is_ that bad!” Richie insists. 

“Where is Eddie, anyway?” Mike asks. “You must be bored if you’re calling me bright and early.”

“Yeah, and you’re having such a non-boring time you’re watching the sunrise alone,” Richie accuses right back.

“Bill’s here,” Mike corrects him absently. There’s a distant sleepy mumbling that must be Bill, it doesn’t do a lot to sell the story that Mike isn’t bored. 

“Sounds like he’s having a great time,” Richie agrees. “How’s life with the straights?” 

“LA is fine, your friends here who you love and adore are fine, thanks for asking.” There’s another distant mumble and Mike’s deeper mumble in response, but the phone isn’t clear enough to make out what’s being said. “Eddie hasn’t kicked you out yet?”

“Not for lack of trying.” Richie finally moves from his couch bed. He was always a phone-mover, pacing, bouncing his feet, whatever he could do in the space he was given. He wanders to the kitchen to finally scavenge for a decent breakfast. “Figure I’ll stay until he does then, I dunno, go and see the other straights.”

“Uh,” Mike says, followed by nothing else.

“Do you have an address?” Richie pries further. “Where are they?”

“Beverly’s in Chicago,” Mike says. “Ben is in Nebraska.”

... _Huh_.

That was not what Richie was expecting to hear.

“Really?” Mike isn’t the type to play a joke like this, but it’s so hard to wrap his mind around that Richie _wants_ to believe he has suddenly become the type. 

Bev and Ben had looked close during the reunion last year. Obviously things were tense and weird the entire time, and moved so quickly the days and hours blurred together, but Richie can still remember them. He remembers Bev at dinner looking at Ben like she wanted to eat him alive. (And who could blame her?) He remembers them at the quarry, the elation and the bone-deep exhaustion in equal parts but holding close together, hidden in the hospital parking lot kissing like they both deserved to be after years of emptiness. 

He remembers them in the Outer Banks, announcing their first kid, he can still see the red of Ben’s cheeks and the awed shine in his eyes. 

It doesn’t make any sense…. They’re _supposed_ to be together.

“It’s not my place to say anything,” Mike reminds him. Their agreement, he doesn’t spill about Richie to the Losers _or_ about the Losers to him. “But it’ll be two stops to see both of them.”

“Shit.” Richie sits at the circular table with three strawberries, too distracted to look for anything more substantial. “That’s surprising, but okay, I’ll let you know?” 

“Sure,” Mike agrees pleasantly. “I’m gonna try to get Bill in front of a keyboard, I think. You good?”

“I’m good.” He smiles with his words, means them completely. “Seeya.”

Eddie reappears not long after Mike hangs up, changed back out of his button up and into a shirt with what looks like a gym name printed on the front. He looks pissed off when he realized Richie ‘helping himself to breakfast’ meant he ate four strawberries and nothing else. 

He grabs one of the tomatoes they bought yesterday and hands Richie a knife. “Cut this.” 

Richie allows himself to be pushed to the far end of the counterspace where he finds a cutting board and dives into slicing. Eddie, at the other end, starts digging around until he produces bread, meat, and cheese.

“Did you know Ben and Bev aren’t together?” Richie asks. He knows he shouldn’t pry too much, and he won’t, but he needs to know if other people are as thrown off by this as he is.

“Yeah.” Eddie only briefly glances away from where he’s carefully buttering a slice of bread.

“Mike just told me,” Richie clarifies. “It’s just surprising, I guess.”

Eddie hums and nods an agreement. “I don’t know any details, really. I think it’s more of an _on hold_ thing than a _never_ thing though.”

“On hold?” Richie does his best to make the next tomato slice even and thin, but it somehow ends up fat and lopsided still. “It’s almost been a year!” 

Eddie shrugs and shuffles the buttered side of the bread around a frying pan with a spatula. Richie doesn’t say what he’s thinking, because he knows it will make him sound like a romantic idiot. He doesn’t say ' _but they’re meant to be together!_ ’ or that ‘ _they’re made for each other!_ ’. He can only sigh and wonder how it’s possible.

“How is Mike?” Eddie asks after a minute, checking that the cheese is the exactly right degree of melted.

“Seems fine.” Richie tidily piles his mostly-intact tomato slices at the corner of the cutting board. “Still hanging out at Bill and Audra’s. I guess he missed the boringness of the library.”

Eddie hums, but it’s not his normal ‘ _I’m listening_ ’ hum. It’s a thoughtful hum. 

“What’s that?” Richie’s voice is high. At Eddie’s confused look he mocks his exaggerated ‘ _hmmmm_ ’.

“Nothing! Just hmm,” Eddie repeats. “Mike was in the middle of touring the country, wasn't he?”

“I guess, I dunno.” Richie has to step out of Eddie’s way to let him finish the sandwiches because his kitchen is so abysmally tiny. “Some shit came up.”

He gestures vaguely at himself to an extremely disdainful look from Eddie, he stops what he’s doing to serve the look over his shoulder and everything. He hums a final time but does not elaborate any more. 

——

They’re arguing over a movie to watch when Richie opens his big fat stupid idiot mouth. 

“You know you don’t have to kick your boyfriend out the whole time I’m here,” he says, stupidly. “He can hang out too.” 

He doesn’t know why the fuck he says it. Just out of good manners, he guesses. Like how people say ‘ _we should have lunch!_ ‘ and both parties know lunch will never happen. He regrets it the very moment Eddie looks thoughtful about it. 

He’s not supposed to think about it, he’s supposed to politely decline and move on from it entirely. 

“You don’t mind sharing?” Eddie asks, unexpectedly serious. Then breaks it. “I know how you are when you don’t have the undivided attention of everyone in the room.”

“Ha.” Richie flips him off from where he’s sitting out on the floor in front of Eddie’s DVD shelf. “I mean I imagine you want to see him too.”

There have been a few times Richie has caught Eddie smiling down at his phone, thumbs flying across his keyboard to reply to whatever message he’d just received. He tells himself it was another Loser. Bill texting some embarrassing story or something, but he knows he’s fooling himself. 

“Yeah, I’ll send him a message.” Eddie smiles across the room at him, looking flushed “He should be out of work soon.”

Richie blinks and double checks his phone. “At eight?”

“Weird hours,” Eddie says like that’ll explain it. “He’s a personal trainer.”

Mentally, Richie feels the final sliver of hope he didn’t even realize he still had disappear into nothingness. Eddie is dating an attractive personal trainer he met at a Jamba Juice. How the fuck is he supposed to compete with that?

Trevor does join them, fresh out of work with his hair still damp from a shower. He has to be buzzed in, Richie notices, no key of his own. He doesn’t allow himself to have any strong feelings about this one way or the other. 

He’s nice, which fucking sucks on top of everything else. Not that Richie would hope for Eddie to be dating an asshole, it would just make it easier to hate him. But when he wanders in, says hello, and kisses Eddie on the cheek, Richie finds he’s willing to put in a little effort. 

They watch a movie together, something boring, Richie doesn’t absorb most of it. He stares so hard at the TV screen he forgets to actually watch what’s on it. His eyes stray only once and find that Trevor has his arm over Eddie’s shoulders, holding him close to his side. After that he slouches low into the corner cushions and practices an art he likes to call ‘ _how long can I not move my eyeballs for_ ‘. 

It’s easier after the movie, with conversation opening back up between the three of them. 

“You have a weirdly high amount of famous friends,” Trevor observes suddenly. 

“I dunno.” Eddie shrugs. “Just a bunch of friends who made money off their talents.”

“So you were always into comedy?” Trevor asks Richie. 

Richie wobbles a hand in front of him. “If you wanna call making fart noises comedy, then yeah.”

“He’s always been like this, if that’s what you’re asking,” Eddie says. “He would make up these bizarre stories just to make us laugh.”

Richie remembers those times, just making things up off the top of his head and telling the Losers like it was a performance. He wonders if Eddie remembers his efforts at ventriloquism, but it doesn’t feel like the time to ask about the weird gaps in their childhood memories. 

“He used to-“ Eddie shifts in his seat, pulling one foot up under himself. “Do you remember the World Weekly news?”

Trevor shakes his head no, but Richie already has a dawning memory building up inside his head. 

Eddie allows himself a small laugh before he continues. “They used to write these news stories like ‘ _I married Bigfoot_ ‘ or whatever. Richie used to read them and come back and report all the stories to us like they were real.”

“Oh my god,” Richie groans. 

Trevor laughs along with them, at least a good sport about not being part of their memories. 

“We had this clubhouse, and he would jump in and announce-“ he shifts again, rolling into a poor Richie impression. “‘Bat Boy escaped the laboratory again!’ It was so stupid.”

“You’re the one that believed all of them!” Richie defends himself. 

“Yeah, true.” Eddie snorts. “I used to be scared Bat Boy was gonna come eat me in my sleep.”

They all three laugh, it’s surprisingly easy. They continue on like this back and forth for a while. 

‘ _Eddie refused to step foot in the public pool but went with us anyway!_ ‘

‘ _Richie ate an entire eggshell on a dare._ ‘

‘ _When I puked after eating the eggshell Eddie puked too for no reason!_ ‘

Trevor shares his own stories as well, everyone has weird childhood stories. Kids are weird and do weird things. Every time Richie finds himself thinking ‘ _maybe this guy’s alright_ ‘ he remembers his arm around Eddie’s shoulders and reminds himself ‘ _actually fuck this guy_ ‘. 

Is it childish and stupid? Probably. Does he care enough to stop doing it? Definitely not. 

Trevor stays the night. Which is fine, it is, Richie’s totally cool with it. He does sleep with his head sandwiched between two pillows, thinking _just in case_. He knows there’s nothing happening behind Eddie’s closed bedroom door, logically, but the part of him that adds ‘ _or is there_ ‘ to that thought sounds very convincing. If it is right, against the odds, he just doesn’t want to hear anything. 

——

In no time at all, a week passes like this. Eddie sometimes work in the mornings, but on Thursday he allows himself to sleep late (by _his_ standards). Trevor spends the night a couple times, but not every day. Richie and Eddie still have plenty of time to catch up together without needing to censor their bizarre lives. 

Eddie shows him around his neighborhood more: the hipster coffee shop that is actually pretty good, a decent Korean bakery, a place where they grab ice cream one afternoon even though the line is out the door. They have nowhere else to be, they figure, why not? 

Saturday morning Richie wakes up with Kermit planted on his chest, staring directly into his eyes. 

“He’s been there for an hour,” Eddie says. He must have heard Richie swear under his breath from his shock. 

“Your cat’s a freak.” Richie doesn’t move. This is the closest Kermit has come to him the whole time. 

“Hey.” Eddie is making coffee. Aside from simply knowing his routine by now, Richie can hear him moving methodically - running water, scooping freshly ground beans, the sound of the percolator hissing and bubbling. Twelve minutes and he’ll be pouring, another minute after that he’ll have a cup for each of them. “I have to go back to work this week.”

“Huh?” Richie falls from his half-dreamy state of counting the minutes of Eddie’s morning routine, confused.

“On Monday,” Eddie goes on. “I took last week off for an emergency, but I need to go back.”

“Oh, shit.” Richie does sit up then, budding friendship with Kermit be damned. “I didn’t even think about that. Sorry about your vacation days, dude.”

Eddie shakes his head. “They were going to waste otherwise. I’m just letting you know.”

“Sure, okay, thanks.” He has to scramble around under the sheet he’s been using to find his phone, he wobbles it in the air once he does. “I’ll get a ticket to wherever the fuck Ben lives ay-sap as possible.”

He thinks, with dread, that it also means he’s going to need to have that other conversation with Eddie ay-sap as possible too.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some minor content warnings: Richie makes some disparaging remarks about his own body and weight. Also one mention of sex under the influence (Richie + a memory of himself)
> 
> Also I want to make clear that Ben is here and he probably does not have the extreme healthy lifestyle that Richie thinks he does but from Richie’s perspective he’s just a very health-conscious dude. He doesn’t question ben’s relationship with food bc he doesn’t think of it as even being a thing and ben isn't really where he wants to just come out and talk about it.
> 
> \------
> 
> Could I have made this two short chapters and made my life easier? Yes, no question, I didn't do that tho so here you go have this beast

Richie does everything he can to avoid his conversation with Eddie for as long as he can. It’s scary! That’s all. It’s nerve wracking to consider actually opening your mouth and saying “I was in love with you as a teenager and also I still am now.” It’s doubly nerve-racking after a week and a couple days of hanging out not just with Eddie but with his _boyfriend_ , too. 

He keeps himself up one night for hours thinking about it. Nervous energy not letting him settle like he drank sixty cups of coffee. His mind circles. Is it a bad idea? Is it the wrong time? Is it emotionally manipulative to bring it up now when Eddie is committed to someone else?

He almost considers calling Mike and telling him everything just to get a second opinion, but he doesn’t. He thinks instead of how he only wants to tell Eddie so he knows, not because he thinks it will magically bring them together. If the voice telling him this sounds suspiciously Hanlon-y that’s his business and no one else's. 

Don’t worry about it, he tells himself, deliriously tired at three-something in the morning. You know how it ends, right? You saw how the story goes. Married, with a house and a dog and all of their friends. 

But did he, though? Was what he saw there the future, set in stone, a clear path? 

The old man had called it something else. A future he _could_ have. A _temporary looksee_. 

He didn’t see _his_ future, he saw _a_ future. 

Sometimes it feels like none of it was real, some kind of hangover fever dream, but he knows it was real. It’s all too vivid to have been just a dream. 

It was real, and if he wants what he was shown, he has to do everything he can to make it happen that way. He has to work for it. He has to take risks. He has to talk to Eddie.

It doesn’t happen like he thinks it will. Tuesday evening after Eddie gets home from work, Richie only finally starting to lose that groggy half-asleep feeling that clung to him for the entire day. His flight leaves in just over 24 hours and they’re alone for the evening and it just falls out of his mouth. 

“You know how we forgot so much from when we were growing up?” he asks. They were just loading the dishwasher and now they’re sitting together, no disruptions. 

“Yeah.” Eddie nods attentively. “What’s up, you remember something?”

“Kind of, I-” He falters, pauses. “When we were-” Why is this so fucking hard to explain? “Did you have it like… like so many things about you suddenly _made sense_?”

Eddie looks uncharacteristically patient, big dark eyebrows pushing down on big dark eyes. “Yeah, Richie, every lukewarm relationship with a woman suddenly made a lot more sense.”

Richie wobbles his head in that back and forth, nonverbal _that’s fair_.

“You too?” Eddie is leaned back in the corner of his plush couch cushions, hands pressed between his bent knees, feet up on the couch. It’s so familiar and so _Eddie_. It makes Richie miss him even though he’s right there. He misses a time Eddie would have been sitting pressed up against his side instead. 

“No, I knew the whole time,” Richie admits. It somehow feels stupider to admit that than if he _had_ only just figured it out a year ago. “I just never did anything about it.”

“Oh.” 

Richie can at least appreciate that it’s not a sad puppy sound that Eddie makes. It’s something else, maybe understanding. He doesn’t want to read too much into it. 

“It’s more like I realized that I was chasing one thing my whole life without knowing it.” Richie tries to stop himself from fidgeting in his seat and giving away his nerves, but then he remembers he’s not in Pete’s office and he can squirm all he needs without Eddie psychoanalyzing him about it. “Does that make sense?”

“I think so.” Eddie is visibly trying very hard to understand Richie’s train of thought. “Chasing what?”

Richie’s mouth is dry, but like an idiot he left his cup of water on the tiny kitchen table and it would be too conspicuous if he got up for it now. He swallows nothing and presses forward. 

“It’s like-“ He stops, hums, thinking. “It’s like I ate a Rice Krispie treat once as a kid and… and even though I forgot the name of it I never forgot how good it was? And I spent years trying to find that treat again and it’s all I wanted but I kept finding like, crispy rice cereal squares.”

“Um,” Eddie says. Rightfully so, because this is the stupidest conversation Richie has ever initiated.

He pushes forward, words coming out in a big rush before Eddie can interrupt again. “They’re similar, but the ratios are all off and the marshmallow is too much and the cereal isn’t right. Then I remembered what a Rice Krispie treat is and I can’t have one anymore because it’s. Uh. Discontinued. But I still want it to be known that I love Rice Krispie treats more than crispy rice cereal squares.”

Richie looks over at Eddie. He waits. He sees the understanding dawn in his eyes.

“I- Uh-” Eddie doesn’t squirm in his seat, but he does look around awkwardly, like he’s hoping to find his answer written on one of his walls. “I don’t know if you’re talking about actual cereal bars or not, I feel like it could go either way with you.”

Well, shit, Richie has to kind of concede to that point. “No, not really.”

“Oh.” Eddie’s voice is barely a whisper. He doesn’t sound shocked, or, well, he doesn’t sound _alarmed_. More like he’s absorbing everything Richie said and feeling the weight of it around them. 

Everything between them just changed in a matter of seconds.

“I don’t know how you never noticed,” Richie says, aiming to reintroduce some levity into their last night. “I wasn’t exactly subtle.”

“I wasn’t the most observant,” Eddie points out. 

“But listen I’m not saying this to like, guilt you or whatever,” Richie says. It needs to be made clear, he _never_ wants that to be part of their dynamic. “I was going to tell you when I showed up here thinking you were straight.”

“You were?” 

“That’s the point of the Apology and Coming Out Tour-- that’s the full title by the way.” Eddie shakes his head, amused. “I’m just tired of hiding all the time, you know?”

“Yeah.” Eddie nods and nods, gradually looking more sure of himself. “I know what you mean.”

“So, we’re good?” He hates to ask. It feels borderline pathetic to ask. But he needs a little reassurance. 

“Of course we are.” Eddie shoots up out of his semi-slouched position so he’s sitting straight up. “I’m just- I feel like I was forcing you to hang out with Trevor this whole time now and-”

“I suggested it,” Richie points out. “I’m happy for you, seriously.”

Eddie stares at him like he’ll be able to detect if Richie is lying just by looking at him. Eventually, he slouches back into his relaxed position and smiles, just a little bit. “Thanks.”

xxxx

The rest of his last night in New York is nice. It helps quite a lot that it feels like a weight’s been lifted from his shoulders, but the relief brings with it all of the exhaustion he’d built up after a couple nights of bad sleep. He passes out early, mid-conversation like a kid at his first sleepover, and that’s it.

The next morning it’s time to go. Eddie is up early, as he has been since returning to work, moving around more or less quietly through the house in socks and tidy slacks. Richie wakes up most of the way, just enough to be aware of his surroundings so he can toss everything in his bag and pull on his shoes. He’s wearing the same jeans he wore yesterday.

He allows himself one brief bleary-eyed moment of watching Eddie carefully tie his tie, looking away before he can be caught. (Eddie still laughs at him a minute later and tells him he looks ridiculous, pointing at his sleep-messy hair like it causes him pain.)

Their goodbye in front of Eddie’s building is unexpectedly awkward and Richie knows it’s all him being tense over nothing and Eddie picking up on it. Knowing it doesn’t help anything though. He wants to say bye properly. He doesn’t know the next time he’ll see Eddie and he’ll miss him. He loves him, yes in the romantic sense, but also as a best friend. 

A goodbye should come with a hug, but after their conversation just a few hours ago, Richie hesitates. He _wants_ to, but what if Eddie _doesn’t_? What if Eddie would be freaked out about it? What if it sends the wrong message? 

So they stand together waiting for Richie’s ride to the airport, Eddie delaying his drive to work to do so. 

“You sure you won’t be in trouble for being late?” Richie asks as the city comes alive around them. 

“No, I won’t miss anything.”

Richie has no reason to doubt him, so he doesn’t press. 

His car is about to arrive anyway.

“Thanks for letting me stay this whole time,” Richie says.

Eddie glances at him from the corner of his eye like he’s scanning Richie over to find a cause for why he’s acting so abnormally. “I’m glad you came. You can visit any time.” He smiles and he _knows_ he’s being annoying. “You don’t even need to call.”

Richie doesn’t play annoyed or roll the words into an effortless joke. He smiles back and nods. He wants to do that.

His car arrives and they finally break their statue-like guardian posts in front of Eddie’s building to face one another again for a final actual for real goodbye. Richie forces his shoulders to stay away from his ears when he nods and says bye.

It’s visible when it clicks in Eddie’s brain. A sudden understanding of what exactly is keeping Richie from leaning down and pulling him into a hug. 

“Oh my god,” he says, exasperated but still smiling. “You’re being ridiculous.”

The next thing Richie knows he has an armful of Eddie, arms wrapped tight around his shoulders, pulling him so he has to slouch stiffly to reach his height. He only stands in shock for a moment before he hugs Eddie back, tight and warm and comfortable.

“Bye, Richie,” Eddie says. His voice is quiet, only for Richie right in his ear. He steps back, smiling with those dimples up at Richie like he can’t believe him, both of them aware that they’re keeping Richie’s car waiting around. “Text me when you get there.”

“Yeah, I will. Bye.” He opens the door of his car, takes one last chance to look at Eddie and wave, and that’s it. He’s on his way off to his next destination.

xxxx

After landing and driving past twenty minutes of cornfields and cornfields and, oh, sometimes a church, just to change things up, Richie decides that Nebraska is the single most boring state that exists. Now, he’s never been to either of the Dakotas but holy shit, this sucks. 

After thirty minutes, his phone rings.

It’s Eddie, snapping at him the second he opens the line.

“You didn’t text me when you landed, asshole.”

“Sorry!” It makes Richie laugh. It makes him happy, too, Eddie calling him just to check in. Having another one of his friends back. “I was so distracted by finding my rental and shit, but I’m here, I survived.”

“Are you at Ben’s yet?” Eddie asks. Richie glances at the clock and figures he must be at lunch somewhere, or locked up in his office eating his workplace-appropriate desk snack. Baby carrots and hummus, maybe. _Pretzels make crumbs, Richie._

“No, oh my god.” More cornfields pass by his window, more and more and more. “Dude, Nebraska is so boring, why does Ben live here?”

“I honestly don’t know,” Eddie says. “I’ve been wondering for months, but I think he’s there rarely enough, maybe he doesn’t notice how boring it is.”

Ben would have to be brainless and eyeless to not notice, but maybe Eddie’s right. It’s half the reason Richie never bothered graduating from his crappy little place. He’s on tour so often, living out of hotels, why pay the mortgage for a nice place if you’re never even using it? 

“I think this is my turn off,” Richie mumbles, half to himself and half to Eddie. He slows to approach a large wooden archway at the end of what must be a driveway, long and disappearing off into trees, no house visible from where he is. “I hope so, I’m taking it.”

“Go, I’m gonna head back to work.” Eddie hovers around the end of his sentence, tone clear he has more to say but hesitating. “Text me though? Call whenever.”

The way he hesitated over something so innocuous. The anxiety hidden in his words. Richie left New York with a promise to call and then didn’t. Of course Eddie thought he was falling right back to where he was before. 

“I will!” He promises with all the sincerity he can muster. “I really did just forget in the chaos.”

“I know. Thanks, Richie.”

They hang up while Richie makes his way along the narrow, winding, gravel driveway toward what he hopes will be Ben’s house. He drives through the tree line around a final bend that reveals to him a wide modern-looking house surrounded by a wooden fence with a big iron gate. Inside the gate is a large dog, jumping and barking at Richie’s car in a way that could either mean it’s excited or wants to kill and eat him. 

He dials the number he was recently assured is the right one for Ben. 

“Richie?” Ben sounds unexpectedly hopeful when he answers. 

“Haystack!” Richie leans back in his seat, car idling as he waits. He peeks out his window again to check he’s still being barked at. “Can you come call off your beast dog and let me in?”

“Let you- hold on.” There’s the sound of shuffling, muffled footsteps, something rattling from being moved around. “Are you parked in front of my house?”

Richie squints toward the house, but he can only see a portion of it and no one is peering out of the windows in his field of view. “I sure as fuck hope so.” He honks for good measure… and also to be annoying. 

“Hang on, I’m coming!”

After Ben ends the call it takes him several minutes to come jogging out through his yard to wrap one hand around his dog’s collar and the other to press a button to open the gate. Richie eases in slowly until he can park.

“Your dog won’t kill me, right?” He calls out the window before he dares to move. It’s Laika, he recognizes her from the beach, and she doesn’t look particularly ferocious with her tail wagging so hard it shakes her whole body, but you never know.

“No,” Ben confirms. He only lets her go when the gate is closed again, and then he’s pulling Richie into a tight hug. “Come here.”

Laika bounces and wiggles around their legs while Ben pats a firm hand against his back. 

“You look great!” Ben turns to lead the way back into his big modern house, all windows across the way. No neighbors to see you walking around naked inside, Richie guesses. 

“I look like I just spent like four hours trying to sleep on a plane,” he corrects. The leg space on planes really does leave a lot to be desired, his whole body feels like a cramp.

Ben’s house is big and wide open inside, minimally decorated other than a wall of recessed bookshelves that show off a small collection of little trinkets. It’s not completely devoid of personality, but it’s treacherously close. 

“Hey, aren’t you like, right in the middle of a tornado zone?” Richie asks as he kicks his shoes off at the door. “What’s with the fuck-off huge windows?”

“They’re reinforced,” Ben replies absently, like it’s almost not even a thought worth dwelling on. “What brings you here, anyway?”

Richie drops his bag next to his shoes and joins Ben on his huge L-shaped couch. The urge to pass out is already weighing heavy at his eyelids. 

“To see you?” That should have been obvious, he feels like. “I’m sure as fuck not here for the cornfields.”

Ben has crow’s feet when he smiles, but instead of old and tired they make him look kind, happy. He barely laughs, just a nose puff, but Richie knows he means every last air molecule of it. 

“I’m making my rounds.” Richie gestures vaguely, too tired to mock up a marquee properly. “The Great American Sobriety Apology and Coming Out Tour!”

Maybe it’s because he’s so tired, or maybe he’s just an idiot, it takes his brain a solid few seconds of Ben gaping at him to catch up with what his mouth said. 

“Fuck. I was supposed to leave that second part out for now.”

Ben’s eyes are wide and his mouth moves like it’s going to make some words, but ultimately nothing comes out.

“Uh, shit… tada!” Richie flails one hand out in a half-assed flourish, trying his very best to pretend like he’s not slightly freaking out. It helps tremendously to know that Eddie is out to all of them. Still scary, but slightly less. “I’m gay.”

“Richie.” He says his name so softly, all deep damp puppy dog eyes gazing over at him. Then he moves, sliding across the tasteful pleather couch and enveloping Richie into the warmest hug he’s had in his entire adult life. 

There’s so much affection in it. So much genuine care without Ben even needing to say anything else. It has Richie leaning into it and soaking it in, none of the manly back clapping of the hug they had outside, just a solid hold and two handfuls of the back of Ben’s shirt. Ben’s hands open, palms warm and wide on Richie’s back, one sliding in a comforting little circular motion that almost tickles between his shoulder blades. 

It reminds him of the way his mom would hug him as a kid when he was sick, or crying, or just in a bad mood and needing the affection. Like reflex his eyes prickle embarrassingly, and he heaves a shaking breath, and Ben squeezes just that little bit tighter. 

When they pull apart Richie sniffs and blinks his tears back, and when he coughs and laughs at the situation Ben laughs right with him. 

“I’m glad you told me,” he says. 

“Yeah, well.” Richie shrugs. What is he supposed to say that won’t expose his entire soul in the middle of Ben’s big empty house?

Luckily, Ben must sense his reluctance to be any more open than he already has been, because he jumps up from his seat. “I’m supposed to be working right now actually, I’m sure you want to rest up a bit. I have a guest room.”

He gestures and Richie follows with his bag in hand into a pretty plain bedroom with some strange-looking art on one wall and sheets that look like they’ve never been used. 

“How about dinner later?” Ben asks. “There’s a place in town with good steaks.”

Richie agrees and Ben quietly shuts the door, disappearing away into some office, he assumes. Jeans gone, Richie falls into bed immediately ready to fall asleep. He shoots Eddie a brief text first. 

‘ _told ben & he made me cry lol_’

Not half a minute passes before Richie’s phone is ringing. 

“What the fuck?” Eddie asks before Richie can even properly answer. “What happened? What do you mean he made you cry?”

“Whoa, whoa, Eddie, cool your fuckin’ jets, dude.” Richie has to speak up to stop Eddie from rapid-fire rambling until they both die. “He just gave me a really good hug and I thought it was funny.”

“Oh.” 

Richie wishes more than anything he could see Eddie’s face. It’s impossible to glean any sort of emotion out of his one-syllable response. 

“He is a good hugger,” Eddie continues. He clears his throat. “Sorry I freaked out.”

Richie assures him he’s fine, everything is fine, and they disconnect. As he settles into bed and tries to squeeze in some kind of a nap, something stays floating around in his mind. Something about Eddie jumping into action the second he thought Richie was in a rough spot. Like he was ready to fight another one of their closest friends for something that didn’t even happen. 

Huh. 

——

Ben is wearing honest to god cowboy boots when Richie joins him, freshly showered and dressed and ready for steaks. He thinks about Eddie in Oklahoma, then course corrects and thinks about Eddie in New York. How he would kick Richie’s ass before he ever touched a pair of cowboy boots in the middle of the city. 

Laika blinks open one eye from her bed when the door opens and closes it again before they’re out, completely unbothered. 

“Oh, dang. I forgot,” Ben says after several minutes driving along a featureless road in his big pickup. “This place has a bar, is that- We could go somewhere else.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Richie reassures before Ben can work into a real fit about it. “I’m not gonna like, Cookie Monster it at the sight of alcohol.”

It’s a relief when Ben actually laughs at the joke instead of showing even _more_ concern. Richie didn’t realize it was something he was gearing up for until it doesn’t happen. Trust, he guesses. Ben trusts him if he trusts himself. 

He does.

The restaurant is nearly deserted, but Ben is greeted like an old friend. He looks embarrassed when the bartender acts like it’s a big deal that he has company for once. 

They’re seated and ordered in minutes, Ben has a beer dropped in front of him without needing to be asked as Richie asks for a water. He nods Ben along, and genuinely it doesn’t bother him to have someone drinking near him. He said it wouldn’t, yeah, but that doesn’t mean he’d _entirely_ believed it. 

Still, it’s (unsurprisingly, for Ben) considerate when Ben asks for water instead of a second beer. 

“So how’s the big tour gone so far?” Ben asks. His hands work carefully to cut the meat in front of him, none of Richie’s sloppy hacking. 

“Mmm,” he hums, thinking of a concise summary. “Bill cried, Mike and I _both_ cried, Eddie beat me to it.”

“Somehow none of that’s surprising.” Ben grins like they’re sharing an inside joke. They all know each other so well. “So Beverly is next?”

“Beverly?” He wrinkles his nose in distaste. “She’s at full name status now? Damn, what happened?”

When Ben is silent, taking way more time to saw away at another chunk of meat, Richie balks. 

“You don’t have to say anything.” He spins his fork in his fingers over and over, twirling a single green bean around and around. “I just thought for sure… Things seemed like it, in Derry.”

“Yeah,” Ben agrees. He finally looks back up at Richie, surprisingly neutral. “She just needs some time. There’s a lot I can’t… won’t say, but- I waited thirty years, I can wait one more.”

Richie pictures Eddie back in New York, with Trevor, and knows that he would be willing to do the same exact thing. He would wait another thirty years if that’s what it took, old and decrepit and finally having him. 

God, if only the Losers knew that Ben wasn’t the only soft-hearted pining idiot, he would never live it down. At least he’s never written Eddie a poem. 

“I’m sorry, dude.” _Stupid,_ his brain shouts, _you can do better than that._ “I wish I was here for you this year, you know? I get what you’re going through.”

“You don’t have to—“

“I do,” Richie says. “I want to. I’m sorry I wasn’t a better friend this year. I’m going to be better.”

When he looks back up, Ben’s eyes are shining. 

“I’m really glad you found your help,” Ben says. “When Mike told us he saw you, I was in Taiwan, I wanted to get on the next flight.”

Richie chokes on his laugh. Neither of them have touched their food in minutes. 

“I didn’t want any of you there,” he confesses. “Mike just has a way of tracking us down.”

The smile Ben has is fond and it fills Richie with warmth. It took him some time to stop blaming Mike for everything, for dragging them there, for Eddie and for Stan. He doesn’t anymore, of course. He knows everything Mike gave up to stay there, all to save Derry. It’s nice to see that absence of resentment in Ben’s eyes too. 

“What’s after all this?” Ben asks. “Back to comedy?”

“I dunno.” Richie shrugs. “I’m a white guy with opinions, maybe I’ll start a podcast.”

They close out dinner bouncing ideas back and forth about what Richie could podcast about, each and every one of them terrible. They both fall apart into laughing fits as the ideas devolve further and further. 

Back in his plain guest room Richie calls Bill who is apparently alone in his office plugging away at the word factory. Bill pouts and whines about how Mike and Audra are out swimming without him and Richie almost asks him the question that has been scratching at his mind since that first night he joined the three of them for dinner. Why is it that Mike hasn’t moved on in his travels just yet? What exactly is going on between them?

He doesn’t, though. Bill sounds content, and Richie supposes he can admit that Bill deserves that. 

They exchange “love you”s at the end of their call and Richie falls asleep feeling cared about. It’s good. 

xxxx

He spends a week at Ben’s place, only a little less than at Eddie’s. It makes sense, he figures, since there’s no big love confession hanging over his head like a dark cloud this time around.

Fucking Rice Krispie Treats, what is wrong with him. 

Ben is in the middle of a big project, something up in Canada for some office wanting to expand. He doesn’t spend his entire days tucked away in his office alone though, and halfway through the week he brings out a bunch of sketches and lays them across his wide kitchen island to work on them there instead. 

He talks Richie through his different ideas while Dorothy and Blanche bicker in reruns on the TV across the room. 

“It has to be _green_ ,” he explains. “Roof garden, renewable materials. I read about this roofing being used in Pittsburgh that absorbs air pollution, don’t know about the results yet, but they’ll love it for the headline alone.”

It’s interesting stuff. A lot of it goes over Richie’s head, but he can see that Ben _cares_ about it when he talks. He becomes more animated and his eyes light up. He taps the end of his pencil against the table while he thinks about something and smiles triumphantly when he figures it out. 

“It’s cool you get to do this,” Richie says at the end of one of Ben’s work days. He’s rolling up a pile of papers to put them back in his office. “Like this thing you really like a lot is your job.” 

“Yeah.” Ben puzzles about it for a second, his eyebrows twitch together. “Isn’t it the same with you? With comedy?”

“Maybe at the beginning.” Richie shrugs and shoves his fists into the pockets of the hoodie he put on against the summertime AC. “Before the persona and the writers and the… whatever.”

Ben plops himself back down onto the kitchen stool, big round roll of papers left ignored. “You can do that again, you know? Your own thing.”

“Maybe.” His voice is quiet, considering. It’s hard for him to put his exact fears into words just yet, but he feels them. _Can he_? Is that really an option?

Is it better to drop off the face of the Earth, a meltdown and rehab and a ‘ _do you remember that guy?’_ Or to claw his way back up from the bottom again…?

“I mean, you don’t have to, obviously,” Ben amends. “But you know we’ll be there for you.”

It seems an impossible task, but he’s achieved the impossible before. It felt impossible to face his fears and defeat the clown, but he did it. It felt impossible to drag himself out of the cistern with Eddie bleeding out on his back, but he did that too. And he was able to because the Losers were with him. 

Maybe he can do this too, if they’re with him. 

“I know.” Richie smiles. 

——

Richie learns on his second day in Nebraska that Ben runs every morning in laps around his house. He’s attempting to figure out Ben’s needlessly modern coffee maker when the man himself traipses back through the front door with a panting Laika right behind him, sweaty and catching his breath. 

“How do I make this thing give me coffee?” He asks. “Why does it have so many _buttons_?”

Later, after Ben is showered and they’re both caffeinated, he asks about it. 

“Every morning,” Ben confirms. “Well, in the winter I use the treadmill if there’s too much snow, but the cold air can be nice too.”

Richie hums and looks Ben over again. “Is that how you got the body of a Greek statue?” 

“ _No_.” Ben’s ears turn a deep red. “It’s just good for you.”

He considers it for a quiet moment. He’s aware he could be in better shape, even before rehab and the not exactly balanced diet of whiskey and whatever he could find shoved back deep inside of his cabinets. Eating on tours was never really a health-based choice, rather whatever was closest and fastest they could devour before they needed to hit the road again. 

Ben told all of the Losers back in Derry the story about being in high school, the asshole track coach who embarrassed him about his body and all the spite-fueled work Ben did. It’s respectable, as far as Richie is concerned. He takes care of himself. It’s something Richie knows he ought to get into. He’s not getting younger any time soon and he’d like to be a little bit less of a schlub if he could. 

That, he supposes, is how he finds himself outside with Ben the very next morning doing stretches on the big wooden deck. He tries, at least, bending toward his toes and lunging halfheartedly forward. Ben doesn’t say anything until his own stretches are done, when he stands and watches Richie reach toward his toes. 

“Bend at your hips,” he says. 

“Where the fuck do you think I’m bending?” It’s a struggle to speak from his angle so his voice comes out strained and warbly, but nothing has ever stopped him from speaking before. 

“Your spine.”

Big hands land low on Richie’s back and push him painfully forward, surprising an embarrassing grunt out of him. They continue, Ben pulling and pushing him into the correct form and pointing out helpfully which muscles he should be feeling straining, as if he can’t currently feel every single muscle in his body screaming. He’s sweating before they’ve even taken a step off the deck. 

“Trust me,” Ben says. “This is a lot better than a pulled groin muscle.”

Richie makes one lap around the house on a well-worn dirt path before he gives it up, gasping and pushing his awful sweaty hair out of his face, sitting on the bottom step of the deck to wait for Ben. He watches him complete three more, carefully paced and only a little breathless when he finally does stop. 

“Not bad!” His assessment is delivered good naturedly. “For a first shot? Not bad”

They have to do cooldown stretches, which are a thing apparently, and Richie can feel every movement he’s made since waking up in every nerve of his body. Even though it sucks, he can see why Ben does it every day. It’s--he wouldn’t say _energizing_ , but rewarding. His legs feel loose and achy from exertion. 

“Don’t count on me becoming a gym rat anytime soon,” Richie grumbles back at him. “Leave that to Eddie.”

Still, it doesn’t stop him from joining the next morning and the one after that. When he completes two laps without stopping to break, he feels like he achieved something he wouldn’t even have attempted not all that long ago. It’s good! He likes it, no matter how much he gripes and cries about it in the process. 

——

He gets a haircut since he’s in desperate need, something he only fully realized once he was running with Ben and got hit in the eyes repeatedly with his sweat damp hair. There’s a very minor difference in his normal length and ‘ _old man clinging to his twenties_ ‘ and he’s surely passed that. _And_ since he’s in fuck-off Nebraska where there’s hardly a concept of _carefully disheveled_ the cut they give him makes him look like a fucking _dad_. 

Richie moans about it and Ben laughs and takes a picture of him to send to everyone. 

“Bev says you look handsome,” he reports back to Richie with glee. 

It makes Richie groan even louder. 

The haircut is fine, realistically. It’s not _that_ short. It’s only just different enough to make him hate it entirely. 

Eddie agrees over the phone the next day, insisting he looks _good_ , even. 

“I look like a fucking narc,” Richie argues. 

He choke-laughs, unable to do either one clearly. “You--” he clears his throat, still laughing to himself. “You do look a little bit like a narc.”

“Fuck you, dude.”

“Hey, don't feel bad about it. If it helps, it shows off your enormous fivehead too.” Eddie laughs again like he’s the funniest person on earth. And fuck him because Richie agrees. 

It reminds him of being a kid all over again. How he would never hesitate to embarrass himself in new and inventive ways just to have Eddie’s attention. Even if Eddie was looking at him and telling him what a dumb fucking moron he was, that was all he needed. 

He was so transparent the whole time… maybe one day it won’t be such a sore spot he’ll be able to joke about it. Tell Eddie how lucky he feels he didn’t have a crush on someone smarter, anyone else would have figured it out instantly. 

Maybe. 

——

Toward the end of Richie’s stay, Ben takes a full day off and they go out to grab lunch. Not the same bar as the night he arrived, something near a big box mall that Richie is sure the people of Nowhere, Nebraska consider fine dining. The trip ending comes along naturally with Ben being called to show his face in Canada, both of them buying tickets in the same evening. 

Richie replaces his cracked phone, surprised by how much better he feels with the reminder of him throwing his phone across his apartment out of his hands. It hadn’t felt like its presence was weighing on him, but he’s been bad at reading himself that way before too. 

He fiddles with it at lunch for a while, changing over the SIM card and touching all the icons to see what they do until he gets bored of it. God knows if he’s left to his own devices he’ll check Twitter and that’s the last thing he needs to do. 

He pushes the phone to the edge of the booth table, face down. Ben says nothing, but sets his own phone aside as well. 

“Has anyone…” Richie stabs distractedly at the salad he ordered, barely looking at his plate. “The Losers. Has anyone talked to Stan?”

Ben’s mouth twists. “No.” 

“Yeah.” Richie sighs, dropping back heavily into his seat. The cheap cracked vinyl wheezes under the pressure of his sudden weight. “I didn’t think so.”

Silence hovers around the both of them for a while as they eat and sip and think. 

“I miss him,” Ben confesses. “I understand why he doesn’t--after he--but…”

Richie sighs again, heavier. “Yeah.”

He thinks about it more often than he wants to. How Stan looked in the hospital back then. How fragile he was.

Stan was always a little bit more affected by things than the rest of the Losers were. That year after the clown, he was the last to really forget it all, magical memory erasing and everything. Richie sees it more clearly now that he’s remembering. Stan in the beginnings of high school being quiet and withdrawn, looking sad. 

_Hormones_ , according to Richie’s mom, like that just explained everything. 

He eventually shifted back to normal Stan, or found a new normal to be at, but Richie can see now in retrospect that he never really did go back to how he was before. None of them did really, if he had to be honest. 

Stan got married. Talking about his wife was the only time he looked remotely happy while in Derry. He laughed along at dinner, sure, but he still looked faintly green the entire time. All Richie can really do is hope that she’s there to make sure he’s okay.

xxxx

On Friday Richie trails Ben to the airport where they split off and away to their separate gates after another long, kind hug. No tears this time from either of them thankfully.

In no time he’s in Chicago. New surroundings, new rental, new new new. For the last time, he thinks a little grimly. He’s looking forward to the weight of the conversations he’s having with his friends to stop tiring him out and finding a casual normal with them. That doesn’t stop him from feeling like there’s still one more conversation he needs to have before he can be done.

People in Chicago drive like complete bastards, and after spending a week in Nebraska Richie is loving it. He’s made to be in the city. Used to live in Chicago, too, until he got too sick of the winters. 

He gives Bev a warning call where he’s refused to for everyone else. It’s the middle of the day, he figures, she’s a busy designer, she might not even be home. 

“Richie!” She answers quickly. She sounds eager. “Is this what I think it is?”

“That depends on what you think it is.” Someone behind him blares their horn when he takes half a second too long to make his left. 

“That sounds like Chicago. I knew it!”

“Did someone tell?” he asks. He’ll have to make Mike give whoever tattled a dad-speech. Unless it was _Mike_. Bill couldn’t convincingly give a dad speech, Richie just knows it. 

“No.” He can clearly picture the wry little smile on her face. The one that had struck him still in Derry with how much she looked exactly the same. “But when Eddie and Ben both mentioned unexpected visitors recently I had a feeling.”

“There goes the surprise,” he groans. “You always were the smartest Loser.”

“Hey!” she calls. “One of us always had straight As and it wasn’t me.”

“Watch your mouth, Marsh,” Richie warns. “You’ll tarnish my carefully-crafted fuckup reputation.”

“Where are you?!” 

“Close-ish.” He glances at the map opened on his phone leading him in the general direction of Old Town. “Am I going to have to fight someone to the death for parking?” 

He doesn’t have to fight anyone, it turns out, which is good luck for him because he’s won exactly one fight in his life and Bowers was too distracted to really defend himself then.

Beverly is in some kind of sundress-type thing when she greets him at a gate at the bottom of a stone staircase leading up to an old-looking townhouse, it blows in the wind above her knees when she waves him over. She has to tiptoe to hug him and her short hair tickles against his chin when she does. 

Inside is nice, in a classic way that makes sense for Beverly Marsh to live in. It’s not modern and pretentious like Eddie’s place nor devoid of personality like Ben’s. It’s old, with exposed brick and radiators that probably click and clang all winter long. 

They hang out a tiny bit and order food for early dinner, but decide to take the hike to go pick it up in person. She’s busy, by the sounds of things. On her own and making her business her own thing. He’s proud of her, seeing her work around the house, tables covered in drawings.

“I used to live in Chicago, years ago.” Richie tells her a little ways into their walk. Old Town is a significantly nicer neighborhood than he had lived in back then, in his twenties and struggling with money, fighting for his chance to get up onto a stage and make a name for himself. 

“I love it here,” she replies. “Do you miss it?”

“Compared to LA? No way.” 

Beverly makes a face, disgusted. 

“Yeah, yeah. Everyone in LA is fake and desperate, it’s true.” The sidewalk gets more crowded as they shift from the residential street and begin to pass more shops and restaurants. “At least I’m not freezing my balls off every time I step outside five months out of the year.”

“Mm, I can’t argue with that.” She edges closer the more busy the sidewalks become, looping one hand up to grab hold of Richie’s arm. “How was New York?”

“As New York as ever.” They pass bakeries, some pretentious looking shop, something selling rolled ice cream, whatever that is. “Eddie’s the same. Well, aside from the obvious.”

Beverly _hm_ s.

“You’re all the same, actually,” he muses a little. “Now that I’m remembering more. Just like when we were kids.”

“You are too, you know that?” She asks. “The same. Lot bigger, though.”

“Yeah, I’m working on it. Kind of.” With his free hand he pats his stomach once. His muffin top is a far way from the string bean kid he was in 1990.

“Now-!” Beverly _thwaps_ his chest with the hand wrapped around his arm. “I’m talking about you being six-foot-whatever with shoulders like that!”

“Oh, yeah, that too.” He resists hunching his shoulders down in response to the attention to his size. It’s an old habit he’s carried for years, uncomfortable with the attention he got from being tall and broad. 

Finally they arrive at the place they’d ordered from, grab their bags and their drinks and turn to walk their way back to Beverly’s. It’s been _years_ since Richie has had a genuine Chicago beef sandwich and he isn’t willing to admit out loud how much he’s looking forward to it. 

Beverly reaches up and grabs Richie’s arm again. It’s nice, actually, a casual touch like this. Something else he hasn’t had in a lifetime. 

“Ben told us this story last time we were all together, before we knew where you were.” Her other hand moves like she wants to gesture while she talks, but it’s weighed down by one of the bags of food, waving with each movement. “About a time you wanted to see a movie and paid for his ticket because he had no allowance left.”

“Oh _yeah_!” The memory floods back. He remembers playing it off like it was nothing even though it took every last dime of his own allowance. “I think we saw... Dick Tracy? Of all things.”

“That’s what I mean,” Beverly says. “You’ve always been thoughtful like that.”

He feels like he’s being looked at under a microscope. “I just hated doing stuff alone, that’s all.”

“You’re not alone now, either.” She drops her head against his shoulder without faltering in her steps.

\----

“How’s Ben? 

They’re sitting together on her couch in the evening. A movie plays in the background, but neither of them pay it much attention at all. Instead they’re talking and joking and, in silent moments, leaning into each other's sides and simply being there together. 

He’s not surprised she would ask about Ben, but he is surprised it took her this long to do it.

“Ben is fine,” he says, keeping it simple. “Busy, I think.”

“That’s what he always says, too.” She doesn’t look over at Richie, but he can see the disgruntled pull at the side of her face. “The more he says he’s _fine_ , the more I worry.”

“He seems kind of, I don’t know--“ Beverly goes tense next to him, only noticeable because they’re mashed side to side. “Lonely.”

It’s not like Richie had completely missed the signs of it while in Nebraska. Ben didn’t seem _sad_ , but he did look like a guy who needs a little more than what he’s currently getting. He can mask it all he wants, you can’t bullshit a bullshitter. 

Beverly is quiet. Maybe she doesn’t want to talk about it at all anymore, maybe… who knows. But if it’s his duty as her friend to make a nuisance of himself for the greater good, he’ll do it. 

“What happened?” he presses on. “It looked like you two had something.”

“We do. Or we did, I don’t know.” She falls deeper into Richie’s side, slouching sideways in a way he knows can’t be comfortable. “I just wanted one year of my fucking life that wasn’t defined by a man.”

Richie doesn’t know a person on this planet who could blame her for wanting that. 

“You’ve earned that, I think.” Richie drops a hand out between them, palm up, an invitation. “How is it?”

She takes the invitation and weaves her fingers between his. “I love it. I love the work I’ve done, I love this place--” she waves her free hand up at a wall covered in wacky looking art. “Sometimes... it’s lonely.”

When Richie squeezes her hand she seems to snap a little, shaking her hand in front of her like she’s waving the stink of her admission out of the air. 

“You didn’t fly all the way to Chicago to listen to me complain,” she says. 

“I asked,” Richie points out. “I want to hear about how you’ve been.”

“I want to hear how _you’ve_ been!” She turns their held hands and claps her free hand on the back of his. 

“I’ll go next,” he promises. When she doesn’t say anything straight away he nudges her thigh with his wrist. 

“What if I made him wait too long?” Her eyebrows press together, Richie can see the wrinkling in her forehead. “Every day I want to call him but he doesn’t deserve to be strung along.”

It’s not hard to understand where her worries are coming from, but as the second most lovesick Loser in the bunch he knows how unfounded they really are. Eddie knows Richie loves him, he told him so to his face… more or less. They talk on the phone every day, even if it’s just a quick text or two here and there, and Richie never feels _strung along_. There are some calls he feels a little more lovesick after than others, of course, but that’s not Eddie’s fault. 

He had the conversation with Ben about waiting as well. He meant it when he said he would wait and Richie knows it. 

“Bev, trust me, you haven’t waited too long.”

She breathes in, and then out, deep. “What if I don’t deserve him?”

“What do you mean?” He asks.

“Is that crazy?” She finally does look at him now, blinking over at him with wide eyes. The lines in her forehead made deeper by the light of the TV shining yellow-blue-orange across the side of her face. “To be afraid you don’t deserve something that good?” 

“No.” Richie rubs his thumb over the back of her hands, counting across her knuckles and over soft skin. He knows exactly what she’s feeling. “That’s not crazy.”

After a moment of quiet, still looking at Richie, her shoulders drop. He doesn’t know what he does to give it away but she looks at him sadly. “Oh. Is it Eddie?”

When he nods to confirm, though, her eyes go wide in shock. 

“Why are you surprised?!” he shouts, animated enough that Bev has to sit up properly again because her human pillow is moving. “You just guessed it!”

“I didn’t expect you to agree so easily!” She looks at him with her big blue eyes. He can’t tell if she’s more surprised at the _men_ part or the _Eddie_ part. 

“Yeah.” He drops his head back against the plush cushion of her couch. “I’m just sick of secrets, I guess. You’re the only one who guessed.”

“Not surprising.” She follows his lead, leaning against the back of the couch herself, but turning sideways to face him doing it. “I suspected, at the hospital, but--“

Every hair on Richie’s neck stands up and his head goes hot with the horror of being so _seen_. He’s a lot better off than a year ago, but not _that_ much better. The thought that back then, not on his own terms, Beverly _knew_ …

“No!” He wrenches his hand away from hers so she can’t feel his palm sweating. “No thanks on the hospital talk.”

“Okay.” Her grip on his shoulder is calming. She’s still there. She’s just Beverly. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s--“ He doesn’t finish the thought, doesn’t know if there is a finish to it. He shakes his head, he’s fine.

“Do the others know?” Her hand on his shoulder slides down so she’s holding his bicep instead. He appreciates that she doesn’t grab at his hand again right away. 

“Not about Eddie,” he says. “Well, Eddie knows.”

“ _Eddie knows_?” Her relaxed posture vanishes sitting straight up at his side. “What did he say?” 

“It doesn’t matter. He’s--” Richie shifts. He doesn’t want to just spill someone else’s beans, even if they’re mixed all up in with his own beans. “Well, nothing is happening, let’s say.”

“Oh, Richie.” She knows exactly why it’s not happening, the understanding is right there in her eyes. She doesn’t say anything, though. She drops her forehead to his shoulder and wraps an arm around his middle in a kind of awkward but very appreciated hug. 

When he leans into it so that his cheek presses against the top of her head and he has to reach up to push some of her flyaway hairs out of his mouth, he’s taken back to another time. Sitting in the sand with Beverly, not so different from how they’re sitting now. The sister he always secretly wanted but never got to have. 

He thinks about the tiny life inside her, barely perceptible, that he nicknamed Big Lunch. 

He kisses the top of her head. 

“If you don’t call Ben soon, I will,” he threatens. “And I’ll take him first.”

Beverly laughs from her chest, loud. “I don’t think he swings that way.”

Richie sighs like this is the most devastating news he’s ever gotten in his life. “I should have guessed from the cowboy boots.”

xxxx

Watching Beverly do her work is not entirely unlike watching Ben do his. They both hoard sketches like some kind of weird art dragon, wall-to-wall office drawers stuffed full with them. Beverly is louder in comparison. Where Ben works behind the closed door of his office in the quiet, sometimes interrupted by an important call, Bev has a small modern record player she turns up loud and lets the music escape through her entire house. 

She’s singing along to something upbeat and folksy that Richie doesn’t recognize when he finds her in there in the morning, tilting far back in her chair and glaring at an array of shirt designs. 

The office is… cute? It’s nicely decorated around her desk, facing a big high window partially-covered in wandering ivy. There are several bookshelves that each look to be a 50/50 split between book storage and plant storage, a delicate glass plant mister sitting atop one of those shelves. There’s a long accordion closet door, a mannequin bust, and a big metal clothing rack completely stuffed with hangers and multicolored clothes.

Her face relaxes when she looks up at Richie in her doorway. 

“Hey, Rich.” She drops her chair back down so it rests on all four legs. “There’s croissants in the kitchen.”

“Mm, thanks,” he half grunts. He accepts the offer of her large coffee mug held out to him gratefully, taking a warm drink and handing it back. “Working this early?”

It’s not _that_ early, really, but early enough they could’ve walked for breakfast or he could’ve made them eggs or something before she got started. 

“Not really.” She sends her desk another pained look. “I like these ideas on paper, but looking at them here…”

She makes a disgusted face and gestures vaguely at a mannequin bust with some scraps of white fabric pinned around it. 

“Maybe I’ll just toss the ideas, start over, burn it all.” Bev takes a long drink from her mug. She pauses with the ceramic still presses to her lips and narrows her makeup-free eyes at him. He watches her eyes dart to look him over like a slab of meat wearing raggedy old sweatpants and a t-shirt that’s seen better days. “Richie. Would you model for me?”

That’s. Not what he expected her to ask. Richie Tozier is _not_ a model. 

“Um,” he says intelligently. “What?”

“You have the shoulders.” Her eyes are still narrowed, looking at his shoulders critically. She pops out of her seat. “Stand up straight.” 

“I don’t do anything straight.” He adjusts his posture anyway, though, pushing his shoulders back and enjoying the stretch of it after a night of sleep. Not even bad sleep, just regular sleep is enough to make his back ache these days. How sexy and fun being over forty is. 

“Ha ha.” She spins him around with a surprisingly strong grip on his shoulders. She slides a hand from one side to the other in one quick motion. “That’ll really kill in the new material.”

“If there is--” He interrupts himself to squirm away when her fingers press into and tickle along his back. “--new material.” 

“Oh? You’re not writing?” She hums, partly to the music still playing and partly to her own thoughts while pulling at his ancient tshirt. 

“A little bit.” He’s manhandled to be facing Bev again. She barely reaches his chin and has to stand on her toes to pull his shirt taut across his chest. “I fired everyone though, so it’s not worth anything.”

That grabs her attention. She looks him in the eyes again. “Good for you.” She steps away and scribbles a little bit on a scrap of paper. “So? You willing?” 

“Are you gonna put it online?” he asks.

Beverly nods like his question has suddenly revealed everything. “I can crop it--” She gestures, the suggestion of an image cut off at the neck. “If you don’t want your name attached.”

He thinks about it for a minute. It’s never been something he’s had any interest in. It’s never even been something he’s ever thought about for more than a second. 

It’s Beverly, though! His friend sharing her own interests and having enthusiasm for him trying something new and interesting. Offering to keep him anonymous online because he showed even the slightest hesitation. 

“Why the hell not?”

She beams at him, ensuring he could never regret agreeing to do it for as long as he lives. 

xxxx

Beverly doesn’t let him see the designs while she works on them, going as far as shutting up her office door and kicking him out. “Trust me,” she tells him every time he tries to pry some information from her. “You’ll like it.”

In the meantime they go out together almost every night he’s there. They see a movie, completely forgettable but still a fun enough time out together. They grab dinners and lunches, sitting outdoors when they can and rating every dog that walks past on a scale so complex neither of them fully know what they’re basing it off of, but no dog scores lower than a 9. 

“This is a nice neighborhood,” Richie says halfway through a basket of fries at lunch outside of some perfectly average burger place. “Where I lived in Chicago they couldn’t have outdoor seating without some dude coming up and pissing in your soda.”

“Come on!” Beverly’s laugh is so loud it draws the attention of the table next to them. “It can’t have been _that_ bad.”

“Oh yeah?” 

They drive past his old building, almost twenty years since he first moved into it. It barely looks any different to how he remembers it. Somehow no worse and definitely not any better. 

“Jesus, Richie.” Bev leans over her steering wheel to look all the way up at the building. “This place up to code?”

“Okay, _Eddie_.” He snaps a quick picture of the building for old time’s sake before they keep moving on. “Probably not though.”

He’d forgotten… Not magical clown forgotten, just regular old lost to time forgotten. He lived in that building the first time he slept with a man. Twenty-four and plastered and high and dimly horrified to find it was much better than sleeping with women. It was a long time before he ever let it happen again, then success came, and the writers came, and it was too much risk to let happen. Until this past year, but that’s something else entirely. 

He doesn’t share that specific memory with Beverly. Not this time.

\----

On Wednesday Beverly finally lets him back into her office, where she presents him with two shirts on hangers. 

“Bev that… was really fast.” He doesn’t know how long it takes to sew a shirt together. Was it fast? It’s a lot faster than he could have done it. 

“I had most of the cuts already made, I just had to make some adjustments.” She grins at him like some kind of devilish imp and waggles both shirts before extending one out to him. “Try it?”

The shirt is a long sleeved button-up, mostly white except for a growing pattern of bold black patches beginning at his left shoulder and growing wider toward the right, the entire right sleeve is black.

It’s stylish. Easily more stylish than anything Richie would choose for himself. And when he puts it on, it fits nicely. Snug around his shoulders but not straining against the buttons around his chest. Once he’s all tucked into a pair of decent pants and looking at himself in a mirror he’s feeling strange. He looks good. He _feels_ good too, because looking good makes him feel good, apparently. He doesn’t look _schlubby_ or _sloppy_ or whatever other adjective he would tend to apply to himself in his usual clothes. 

“Perfect,” Beverly hangs the other shirt from a clothing rack in the corner and stomps back over to Richie. She straightens a few bits and picks away a fuzz with her nails. She steps away with her phone pointed at him. “It’s just an Instagram thing, a few quick pictures.” 

Richie stands and waits for her to take the picture, arms at his sides.

Beverly takes one, and then pauses. She peeks around the side of her phone at him. “Why are you standing like that?”

He looks at himself. “I’m standing how I normally do.”

“You aren’t!” She looks at Richie like she’s never seen him before. “You’re standing like a wax figure.”

He has an awkward laugh when she shows him the picture she took, with his arms sticking straight down like some kind of nightmare doll. “I don’t know! What do I do with my hands?

“Here.” Beverly drops her phone and approaches him again. She rolls his sleeves to his elbows in some complicated pattern unlike any utilitarian rolling he’s ever used before. “Hands in your pockets.”

She directs him into a series of different poses and then switches his shirt out. He likes the second much better, a similar cut; collared and buttoned, but this one has a wild cacophony of color and patterns bleeding from his shoulders down into his ribs. It’s _cool_. The top half _does_ look like something he would choose, but as an accent it’s somehow more mature. 

Together they look at the pictures and choose the best to post. They’re surprising to look at; without his face in them he would never guess it’s a picture of him. 

——

Richie’s contact with the other Losers increases every day after arriving in Chicago. Now that he’s seen them all and isn’t keeping secrets from anyone, he can re-engage with their group chat and share in their jokes and laughs and conversations. He gets to be there the night Bill digs up an ancient yearbook and finds pictures of all of them and shares Ben’s nicely written summer wishes and Richie’s much shorter one (the first to sign your crack!). 

It’s really very deeply satisfying. It’s strange to feel the change in dynamic, though. Maybe it just comes from being adults, that’s most likely it, but somehow it feels like they’re off-balance. A shopping cart missing its last wheel. 

Eddie calls him the night after his foray into modeling just to talk about nothing. 

“What’s a six letter word for _storage space_? Ends with an _R_.” 

“Hi Eds,” Richie replies. “I’m good, how are you?”

“Don’t call me Eds, I’m forty-one.” Eddie grumbles something else, too quiet for Richie to hear. “Hi.”

Richie gets the whole daily life update. Trevor is at work late and Kermit broke a glass in the kitchen and Eddie can’t figure out the daily crossword and somehow none of this news is boring to Richie.

“So Bev has you modeling already?” Eddie asks eventually. “You’ve only been there like four days.”

It takes Richie a second to grasp what exactly he’s talking about. 

“How’d you know it was me?” He watched as Beverly posted her pictures yesterday and he was entirely cropped at the neck, no names written in the caption, no tagging his defunct old account. Nothing identifying. 

“Wh--I--I know you enough to recognize you,” Eddie says. He sounds like this is something Richie should have already known. Is it?

Would he recognize Eddie from a picture of just his torso? Probably, he thinks. Even in a non-Eddie style of shirt there’s no disguising his compact built frame.

“Oh.” Sure, Eddie recognizes him from a picture of his chest and arms. Okay. “Well, yeah, just the one time I think.”

“That’s what you think,” Eddie says. “Next thing you know she’ll have you on the runway.”

“Me? No way.” Richie snorts at the mental image of him sharing a stage with a bunch of people a third his age and sixty times as hot. “Though I am open to bribery.”

Richie doesn’t see _this_ drastic of a career change for himself, but it’s fun to think about, a little bit. And he and Eddie laugh at the idea of him showing off the weirdly elaborate outfits models wear at these things, sending pictures back and forth.

Richie stops Eddie before he can end the call. 

“Cellar.”

Eddie is silent for an extended time. Then, “huh?”

“Your crossword,” Richie says. “Try _cellar_.”

“Oh!” There’s a faint tapping scratching sound, pencil over paper. “Thanks, Rich.”

xxxx

“How do you feel about dinner?” Beverly asks as a greeting when she reappears from a series of important work meetings. 

“In general?” Richie asks. He’s slouched back on her big soft couch looking at the notes app on his phone. “It’s pretty good, better than breakfast.”

She rolls her eyes at him. “I’m thinking a specific dinner.”

Her phone bounces on the couch cushion next to him when she tosses it ahead of herself, plopping into the cushion at his other side. He picks it up to check her latest recommendation; a restaurant and comedy club. 

“Real Chicago pizza,” she starts. “ _And_ open mic.”

“Bev--”

“I’m not saying you have to!” Her voice comes out fast, rushing before he can interrupt again. “We can go, eat, watch some people, _or_ you can give it a shot.”

\----

The place, when they arrive, is kind of a dump. Looking around, it’s no surprise the setlist is half empty and two slots for a comedy night were given to musicians. Richie looks at Beverly, pulling out a chair at a small round table for two and exchanging some words with a waiter. 

He signs his name to the list.

They get served their Chicago pizza and Richie sends a picture of the slice he gets, oozing melty cheese out onto his plate, to the group chat. 

Eddie texts him separately, ‘ _you’re not gonna be able to shit for a week_ ’. 

It sends him into such a fit of laughs he almost misses the first musician leaving the “stage” (part of the floor with a different color carpet to signify a separation) and the restaurant employee grabbing the mic.

“Up next we have--” he breaks off to squint down at the clipboard in his hand, then sighs angrily into the mic. “Enough with the fake entries, huh? What jagoff wrote ‘Richie Tozier’?”

That grabs his attention. Nearly sending him to his grave choking on all the excessive cheese. Wouldn’t that just be fitting, surviving everything he has and finally getting his life sorted then dying because of some cheese in a freak accident. 

He raises one hand, wiping the other’s greasy fingers on his pant leg under the table. 

The man gapes when Richie approaches the stage. “You’re… _actually_ Richie Tozier.” 

“Yep!” Richie accepts the mic and the man walks away, slowly, still absorbing the situation. “You were right about the jagoff thing though!” 

That gets a slow rolling chuckle through the people seated around the restaurant. It might be dumpy, but it’s obviously a staple in its own right. Most tables are filled, though a handful of people pay the stage no mind. It’s not a bad crowd, it’s one he can work with. 

“So, I’m not dead…”

He’s not up there very long overall, six minutes maybe. On the longer side for an open mic set but at a place as lacking as this pizza place is, no one really cares.

He addresses some things, like his stint in rehab and his long lasting silence since then, but leaves the rest to mystery. He talks therapy and does a Pete voice to share some of his more tame revelations.

“If you make your therapist make this face--” he pulls a wide-eyed open mouthed shocked expression. “Do you win therapy? Like can I get a trophy for that?” 

He talks about the Losers, too. About how funny they are and how weird it is to reunite after such a long time apart. He shares Eddie’s review of his pizza even though he can barely make it through the story from laughing so hard about it. 

“Anyway my food is going cold.” Beverly makes eye contact from her seat at their table, giant smile stretching her cheeks to their limit. “Thank you!”

There’s scattered applause and in no time, the next name is being called to the fake stage area. 

Beverly stands waiting at their table, ready to pull him into a tight hug the second he returns. “How’s it feel?” She asks once they’re seated again.

“Pretty good!” He grins and prods at his cooling pizza. “It’s been a while, it was fun.”

A part of him was worried, he realizes now that it’s all said and done. What if he wasn’t able to do it again, what if he crashed and burned without the writers there behind him? But no, he’d made it initially on his own merit and he knows that. He has what it takes. 

The material went over well, too! For as much as he never saw himself being _in_ therapy he definitely never saw himself talking about it in front of a crowd of strangers casually. People laughed with him, too. It feels satisfying even though he was a bit reluctant at first.

They finish their grotesque pizzas together and eventually ditch the place.

\----

“Wuh-oh,” Beverly says from her little cutesy kitchen. She went in to store leftovers, pour waters, and get distracted if the sound of her misting her many plants is anything to go by. 

“What uh-oh?” 

“Bill just texted me congratulations.” She swoops around the door frame to stand at his side where he’s seated at her little dining table. On screen is a picture of them from tonight, hugging inside the pizza place. “To the happy couple.”

Some random person on Twitter posted the picture, and within the hour TMZ had an article written about Richie Tozier and Beverly Marsh seen _getting cozy_ in Chicago. 

Their eyes meet over her phone, both of them holding in silence. Richie breaks first, of course he does, head dropping back to laugh and setting Beverly off into her own loud laughter. 

“Wait, wait!” He _devours_ the article at top speed. He reads, “ _As far as rebounds go, we’ve seen worse!_ ”

They cackle together about it and are already seeking out Bill’s contact listing to video call him. 

“We’re getting married!” Richie announces as soon as Bill answers. He and Beverly both are red-cheeked and glassy-eyed from laughing in the little display in the corner of the screen. 

Bill finds the entire thing ridiculous and, while he does get his own laughs out of it as well, he’s the first to really sober up and ask Richie what he plans to do about it. He hadn’t given it a moment of thought, the whole thing is so laughable he figures it’ll die out in a matter of days on its own. 

Still, though. He finds it’s still on his mind hours later, in Bev’s guest room bed, finger hovering over Twitter’s ‘ _log in_ ‘ button. 

“Fuck it.” He says it out loud like it will boost his confidence. Who’s to say if it works or if he instead becomes a man who talks to himself when he’s alone, but he does push the button. 

All of his most immediate mentions are about the picture, which comes as a relief. He’d be a liar if he said he hadn’t been holding onto some fears that he would have to wade through a bunch of speculation on his disappearance and health. 

A lot of the responses are, in all honesty, very funny. 

‘ _that bigfoot looking comedian?_ ’ gives him a good laugh. 

Another post is just him tagged in an image from some reality show confessional, a woman rubbing her temples and saying ‘ _I know his dick is big. I just know it_ ’.

Most others are confused how they even know each other, which is fair enough actually. Without the childhood friendships to consider, the two of them would likely never run in the same crowds. 

That’s kind of the whole reason he bothered to even log in to set things straight. Beverly thought it was funny, of course, and they can continue to laugh about it with the Losers privately, but he wants to tell the truth. 

Not _that_ truth, not yet. 

Beverly has her own business, a name and reputation she’s built for herself, especially after her divorce. He’s not willing to drag that through the mud just because they think it’s funny. 

He retweets someone who posted ‘ _oh no miss marsh you can do so much better please_ ’. 

Then he composes his own. ‘ _Can’t even destroy my arteries with my friend in peace? (That means we’re not dating, she can do better)_ ’.

After a moment, he scrolls back to find the reality show confessional picture again retweets that one as well, adding his own comment. ‘ _this one is true though_ ’.

xxxx

A week passes, and several more days beyond that. Richie dawdles around leaving Chicago because he’s unsure of where exactly his next destination is. He built up this whole _Tour_ idea in his mind so much that it feels incomprehensible to him that it’s done now. A little bit more than a month overall, coming rapidly toward the end of summer. 

It is this exact dawdling that brings him to a sudden realization.

“I missed my four months!” He is, once again, talking to himself alone. Beverly is in her office, door open and music playing, but busy enough Richie decided to give her some space. “Bev!”

He takes the stairs at a light jog right into her open office. 

“What’s up?” Beverly mumbles, head buried in the pages of a sketchbook. 

“I was four months sober last week,” Richie says. “I missed it.”

That gets her to pop up like a jack in the box toy, completely ripped away from her work in an instant and turning her full attention to him. “Richie!” 

She stands up and drags him by an arm into a hug he has so slouch down into. Hugging her always makes him feel so oversized. Not in a bad way really, just in a funny weird way. He could stand up and lift her off her feet easily. So small, and yet he knows she could kick his ass if she really wanted to. 

“That’s incredible.” She gives one more tight squeeze around his shoulders. “You have to tell the others.”

“I just wasn’t paying attention to the date,” he admits. 

Richie digs his phone out of his pocket to text the other Losers the update. Before he can even start typing Bev is slapping at his arm and yelling at him to wait. She rushes to one of her many shelves and removes some sort of plastic organizing container that rattles loudly when it moves. He can’t see past her shoulders when she opens it, but when she returns it’s with a large yellow button in the palm of her hand.

“Your new token,” she says. 

What the _fuck_ , he wants to say. _I love you so much_. 

He clears his throat instead, too clogged with emotion to say any of those things. He sits in one of her plush chairs and chokes out a simple thank you instead. 

A picture of him holding the button between his thumb and forefinger goes out to the group chat. ‘ _Bev gave me a 4 month token_ ’.

The replies come in immediately, like everyone got the notification on their phone and dropped everything. Congratulations, heart emojis, ‘ _proud of you_ ’s all start pouring in together from everyone and Richie… feels like an idiot. 

How did the thought that these people didn’t care about him ever enter his mind? It feels beyond absurd to even think of now. 

He must stare at his phone for long enough that Beverly can tell what is going through his mind. Her fingers catch a little when they push through his hair, it’s finally starting to grow out of the freshly cut dad look he was given (but still too short). She presses a kiss to his temple.

“Did I tell you I had a seizure?” he asks. He knows he didn’t tell her, but doesn’t know how else to mention it. 

Beverly’s eyes go wide and her forehead wrinkles when she raises her eyebrows. It sometimes feels like all of his friends wear their age so much more handsomely than he does. 

“I thought I was dying.” He huffs a short laugh. It sounds stupid to say it now, but it was so scary in the moment. 

“Richie…” Her voice fades, her fingers curl against the side of his head into his hair. 

“I was just hungover,” he explains. “My manager took me to the hospital like five minutes after I just fired him.”

That makes Bev laugh again, a relief to Richie’s ears compared to the sad tone she just had. 

“I’m sorry we weren’t there.” She kisses his temple again and he must be really starved of touch because it’s overwhelming how nice it is. 

“I’m sorry I chased you off,” he replies. 

“We’re good.” She turns and hugs him properly around his shoulders. “Love you.”

“Love you.”

He doesn’t leave when they do finally separate. Asks to stay instead and promises to stay quiet while she goes back to work. He sits on her comfy chair and watches her work or plays on his phone. It’s quiet coexistence in a moment he needs to not be alone.

“So what is next?” Beverly asks. She’s just walked up behind him to dig into a shallow drawer of papers and found him browsing flights (again). “Back to California?” 

Richie has entertained the idea of going home, back to his dumpy apartment where he can start trying to think about his _long term goals_ as Pete would have called them. Bill would help him hunt down a new apartment in a heartbeat, he has no doubts. He’s even looked at the flights to LAX more than once, but hasn’t been able to follow through with the purchase. 

It just hasn’t felt right. 

“I was thinking about it.” He shrugs, not entirely sure he wants to share what _else_ he’s been thinking about yet. He decides a vague allusion never killed anyone. “I’ve been thinking about traveling, picking up where Mike left off.”

Beverly gives him a look. No one has addressed the fact of Mike suddenly settling in with Bill and Audra and halting all travels, but it’s something they’re all increasingly aware of. They’re all waiting, Richie guesses, for one of them to bring it up when they’re ready to. 

“I’ve never been to Disney World.” 

Beverly laughs. “You’ve earned it, I think!” She points at her own head. “Make sure you buy the ears.”

She wanders away again, back to humming, back to working, roaming freely through this space she’s made her own.

Richie continues to look at flights while he makes a decision, avoiding one thought in particular in his mind like it’s a sore tooth. 

Then, without giving himself a chance to second guess himself, Richie books a flight to Atlanta.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me pretending like this is a big shock and not exactly what everyone knew was coming next lmao.
> 
> ALSO YEP NEXT CH IS THE LAST (then there's the epilogue) Thanks for being patient about taking a while to update, I want to be happy with what I put out and sometimes that takes time. 
> 
> also also this is now being translated into [russian](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24965062/chapters/60433909)! Which is pretty cool & thanks to KaritaFroud!


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richie finds Stan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is... not the last chapter after all. I decided to split it in half to avoid a) taking another month and a half to post and b) another 15k chapter which no one needs. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy this reunion! I've been excited to get to this point for MONTHS. 
> 
> CW: discussion of canon suicide attempt, nothing graphic, just that it happened. mention of scars. 
> 
> Additional note: I took from the book that the blood oath was Stan's suggestion, not Bill's like in the movie.

Saying bye to Beverly isn’t a big production. She has some kind of weirdly fancy crepes delivered for breakfast and sends him off to the airport with a big hug and the gracious acceptance of a kiss to her forehead.

All too soon he’s in his hotel room in Atlanta, facing off with the realization that he has absolutely no plan of action and no ideas. He thought something would come to him naturally along the way, kind of. He doesn’t know where Stan lives, has no phone number, and asking Mike would be too obvious at this point. 

He does call Mike though, when sitting in his bed and staring blankly at the turned-off TV doesn’t suddenly inject his brain with a magic solution. They don’t talk for long, but Mike is excited to hear about Richie traveling on his own for a while. Not a surprise. He has suggestions: destinations, restaurants, tourist traps, museums, anything you could think of. The list grows until he promises to just send it in a text instead of expecting Richie to remember it all himself.

When their call ends Richie blinks uselessly at his phone screen for a long while, knees idly bouncing together where they’re curled up in his half-slouched position on the bed.

He feels like an idiot when the thought to just Google Stan’s name finally comes to him. It’s so obvious. He works in accounting, probably a big firm in the city from what little Richie can remember him saying back in Derry. Eddie’s name and information is listed on his workplace website (Richie once searched, curious, and spent an hour bouncing between laughing at the serious-looking hair-slicked yearbook-style photo listed under _Edward Kaspbrak_ and staring at it like a smitten teenage girl). It’s no stretch to imagine Stan’s would too. 

Thankfully his name is unique, and it doesn’t take very long to find him once he gets really looking. He’s mentioned in an article Richie doesn’t read, but it does help him to track down the name of the firm he works at and, easy as that, he has an address. It’s almost underwhelming, how once he has the thought, the search only takes minutes. He can admit he had entertained the thought of playing private detective a little bit longer. 

There’s the address and a picture of the building, all right there, and some reviews as well. Who uses Google to place accounting firm reviews? Why?

It’s actually not even _that_ far from his hotel, and the realization nearly has him diving out of bed and on the road in an instant. The nervous twist in his gut roots him to the spot, though, and so he rotates between standing to leave and sitting again and again until he’s practically dizzy. 

Ultimately, he decides it’s too late in the afternoon to be a good idea, because he doesn’t know how a real job like Stan’s works and for all Richie knows he could be home already. It’s not like he can call Eddie and ask without being suspicious, so he’ll wait. Maybe by tomorrow he’ll work up the nerve and go without having a panic attack or something. 

Tomorrow morning. Early. Ish. After breakfast? 

He returns to look at the website again in the meantime, waiting for dinner to arrive. There isn’t a profile or anything about him, but there is a picture of Stan next to his contact information and a list of his specialties. It’s a normal picture, with only the smallest hint of a smile showing on his lips. His hair is wild and curly but darker than Richie remembers. He grew up remarkably handsome while still looking just like he did when they were kids; same mouth, same nose, same eyes with the hidden glint of something devious in them. Richie can imagine him rolling them the same way he’d always done back then too easily. 

xxxx

It takes hours in the morning to drag himself out of his hotel. It’s terrifying, he feels like a baby deer stepping out into a major freeway. 

It’s late summer already, fall is only just around the corner and so of course it’s a million degrees in Atlanta with humidity like the city wants to drown him. It’s a relief to enter the air conditioned building of the accounting firm for all of one second before he remembers exactly _why_ he is there. 

His plan is, well, he kind of doesn’t have one. Find a directory and walk directly to wherever Stan is like he belongs there? Maybe if he acts like he belongs, he won’t stick out. Which maybe if he’d planned ahead he would have worn anything other than a _Gremlins 2_ shirt. 

Not that it matters. He stands out instantly and there is no directory anyway, so the waiting secretary eyes him up like she’s trying to assess his threat level. 

“Can I help you?” she asks, not rushing to call security quite yet. 

“Uh, yeah.” Richie looks around one last time, desperately hoping to just find Stan hanging around right here. “I’m looking for Stanley Uris.”

Her fingers tick tack over her keyboard. “Do you have an appointment?”

“Not really, I--” He hesitates. He what? “I need to see him.”

Perfect. Not weird at all. 

“You’ll need to make an appointment then,” she says. 

“I’ll be fast,” Richie promises in a rush.

“Mr. Uris has a meeting in ten minutes.”

“I won’t take more than three.” He winks. “I never do.”

That is what finally gains him a new look from her. She blinks away from her computer screen and finally gives him her full attention, scrutinizing. 

“You’re that comedian, aren’t you?” she asks. 

‘ _Oh shit_ ,’ Richie remembers. ‘ _I’m like, famous. Famous people need accountants_.’

“My girlfriend liked you in that movie you did,” she goes on, as if Richie isn’t staring at her like a cartoon character that just got bonked on the head. 

“Uh, thanks.” He clears his throat, adapting to his new approach. “Yeah, I am that comedian. I’m looking for an accountant and Stanley was recommended. I just wanted to meet before I decided anything.”

The secretary squints up at him from her seat, considering. “Three minutes. Fifth floor, on your left.”

“ _Thank you_.”

He takes off at a hurried but normal pace, still trying to pass off as _just a guy looking for an accountant_. No one gets so excited about their taxes or whatever that they run full speed into their accountant’s office. 

So he does his best to be sedate, but still mashes the call elevator button roughly a hundred times a second once he gets there. 

Richie’s stomach is in knots the whole elevator ride. His skin buzzes, his chest flutters, he has to clench and unclench his hands at his sides just to release his energy, flapping the tension out at his sides. It’s a small relief he’s on the elevator alone, because he’s probably exhibiting some alarming behaviors if he really thinks about it. 

The elevator dings, no time to think about it. 

Take a left. A series of doors. Richie has no idea if anyone else on the floor has taken notice of his arrival, his vision is tunneled in on the name plaques by each door he passes. 

Fourth door down. _Stanley Uris_.

The door is only cracked open as if to deter unexpected guests before he has to go to his _meeting_. Richie pushes it open anyway. After everything, he’s not going to stop now because of a _slightly closed_ door. 

He raps a knuckle on the door as it swings open quietly.

Stan is standing behind his desk facing away from the door, fiddling with something on a little table. He’s dressed professionally, but less uptight looking than Eddie. He has a soft looking sweater pulled up over his buttoned up shirt, and Richie sees when he starts to turn, no tie. He looks healthier than the last time Richie saw him, back in the hospital in Derry. Next to him on top of his wheeled desk chair is an open backpack with a laptop stuffed inside; he was packing up. 

“Sorry, I’m just about to--” Stan stops dead in his half turn, staring open-mouthed at Richie in shock. He mouths a couple syllables, but no sound comes out. 

“Hi, Stan.”

Stan’s eyes dart around the room like he’s expecting one of the other Losers to come flying out from behind a filing cabinet or a hidden camera team to announce he’s being pranked. 

“What are you doing here?” He asks. His voice sounds more unsteady than Richie would have expected. “Is It--is there something--?”

“No!”

Stan looks like he could practically cry from relief.

“I just. Wanted to see you. I went to see all the others and it didn’t feel right to not see you too.”

“I have a meeting to go to,” Stan announces. Like this is just another inconvenience. He checks his watch and zips his bag with the other hand.

“We could grab lunch after?” Richie presses. He might sound desperate, but he is desperate. 

“I’m busy.” The polite lilt to his voice is gone, tone flat and lifeless. He brushes past Richie at a deliberate distance, and out of his office door without him. 

“Stan?”

Stan’s already moving farther down the narrow hall of offices. He doesn’t pause or respond. 

Richie leaves, feeling dejected.

xxxx

He calls Eddie in the evening looking for something to boost his mood, some stupid story or even the low level bickering fights they often get into that are too fun to be real fights. Instead, Eddie is in a shitty mood too and neither of them have much to say. 

Richie can’t share why he’s so down in the dumps yet and Eddie, when pressed, only says ‘ _work stuff_ ‘.

“You should quit,” Richie suggests. “Your job fuckin’ blows.”

“And do what?” Eddie asks, incredulous. 

“I dunno. Relax, live off your savings.” He seems the type to have a detailed budget and perfectly balanced savings account and a healthy retirement fund on top of that. 

Eddie snorts. “I’m freshly divorced, Richie, my savings are shit.” 

“Shit, really?” Richie asks. “That sucks.”

“Yeah well.” He can hear Eddie’s shrug when it happens. “It helped things move faster than if I’d fought harder.”

“She fought you on it?” Slouched back in his bed, Richie does start to relax little by little. The distraction of conversation enough on its own.

“She didn’t believe I’m gay,” he explains. “She thought I was having a breakdown.”

“Jesus.”

“I mean--” Eddie breathes the tiniest huff of a laugh. “I did crash my car, disappear, and reappear weeks later with a hole through me, announcing I’m gay. It’s not like it was much of a stretch to think I’d lost it.”

Richie had never really considered the real world impact of their Derry reunion on all the other Losers. Aside from the major obvious changes like Mike leaving and Bev’s divorce and everything, that is. Bill was working on something being filmed and he has no idea how it ended up. Had Ben lost out on some contract? How did Stan manage when he returned home? 

“But it worked out. I got the professional mental competency check and rushed things along after that.” Eddie sighs. Richie tries to picture him, sitting in his pajamas with his knees curled up in front of him like he always sat with Richie. Kermit curled into his hip looking for attention. “I couldn’t wait to move out.”

“Right into your pretentious-ass apartment.”

“Shut the fuck up.” There’s no heat in Eddie’s words, just forever-old comfort. “I like this apartment.”

It’s a nice apartment. Richie knows it means more to Eddie than just being a roof over his head. His first _real_ taste of independence. ‘It’s better than my dump,” he says. “I’m not judging.”

“Are you gonna move out?” Eddie asks. 

“Yeah, probably.” Richie runs over his mental map of LA, where he would like to search. He dwells only temporarily on the little light blue stucco house in Palm Springs with the small pool outside. “Eventually.”

“You like LA?” 

“Yeah, I mean--” Richie shrugs even though Eddie can’t see him doing it. “It’s nice enough. I could use the change of scenery though.”

They go on and on and on, talking about moving and neighborhoods and what sort of things to look for while shopping around. Eddie wants good running routes and quiet neighbors; Richie hopes to have a movie theater nearby and cares about having a grocery store within walking distance.

The theater idea seems to surprise Eddie at first, until he ultimately concedes that it makes sense for Richie. He always was into movies, with his references and his quotes and his mixtapes. 

“Have you seen anything recently?” Eddie sounds… not tired, maybe lazy? Cozy and warm.

“Just whatever’s on TV in the hotels.” Richie slouches lower into his overly soft hotel pillows. “I saw the new _Planet of the Apes_ with Bev.”

“Was it good?” 

Kermit chirps in the background. 

Richie laugh-wheezes. “No, dude, it sucked. There were like five people in the theater and we laughed the whole time.”

“We should’ve--” Eddie yawns, breath hitching in the middle because it’s such a deep one. “Should’ve gone to see a movie.” 

“Go to bed, Eds.” He has to fight to not laugh again. Eddie passing out like a kid at a sleepover trying to talk about a stupid movie. “We can see a movie any time.”

Eddie is quiet for long enough Richie starts to suspect he really did fall asleep on the phone. Finally he does break the silence. “Mmk. I wanna.”

“Sure.” Richie smiles, so fond it aches inside him. “We’ll see a real stinker.”

“Kay.” There are sounds of shuffling when Eddie moves, the soft grunt of him sitting up. “Night, Rich.”

“Night.”

xxxx

Richie returns to Stan’s office building the next day, but he doesn’t enter. There’s no way he could convince the secretary to let him up into Stan’s office without an appointment a second time, and so his backup plan is to wait for Stan to come out around lunch time and grab him then. 

It’s not the perfect plan, but it’s the best he can come up with after thirty seconds of thinking and that’s really all he has the time and brain power to do. So he parks himself at a table outside of a cafe across the street and sips his way through three iced drinks while he waits. Eleven rolls past, and maybe he’s just not an early lunch taker. Then noon melts away with all the ice in his very berry lemonade drink, and one o’clock passes even still with no sign of Stan leaving the building. 

Richie comes to the terrible realization that Stan must pack his lunches and eat inside. 

He texts Eddie, he doesn’t know what else to do.

‘ _you pack lunches for work, don’t you?_ ’

Eddie replies quickly. ‘ _usually. Why?_ '

’ _so you go out sometimes?_ ’

‘ _Sometimes..._ ’ Eddie sends a second text right after his first. ‘ _What is this about?_ ’

‘ _I’m writing a book about the most boring corporate sellout on earth and I’m doing research._ ’

Eddie replies with a string of middle finger emojis and nothing else. 

This becomes the entire basis for Richie’s continuing plan. If Eddie sometimes gets lunch outside of his office, then Stan probably does too.

So he gives up and goes back the next day, looking like a lemonade and iced coffee addict outside of this cafe and he waits. And he does it again the next day. And the one after that. Each time he leaves after one rather than wait around until the end of the work day. He wants to avoid looking like a true stalker, or making Stan feel trapped, or looking like he’s about to follow him to his house and eat his family. Lunch is safe, neutral, temporary. 

Finally he does see Stan leaving the building. He’s alone, glancing down at his phone and walking casually away down the sidewalk. Richie practically leaps from his chair and takes off across the street, barely checking to make sure he’s not about to be run over. 

Stan doesn’t look thrilled when he spots Richie jogging after him, but he doesn’t look angry either, so that’s kind of a win. 

“Stan, please,” Richie gasps, more winded than he’d like from his sudden jog. “I just want to talk to you.”

“Were you just waiting outside of my work?” Stan asks. He looks back over Richie’s shoulder like he might find his stalker nest set up like a creepy little camp.

“Please,” Richie begs. “Please get lunch with me and I’ll never bother you again if that’s what you want.”

Stan looks at him for a long time, quiet and thinking. The same look he used to give Richie when they were kids and Richie would suggest tree-climbing races; Stan knew it was a bad idea, knew he would go home with scraped palms and grass-stained knees. And, just as had always happened back then, he nods. “Yeah, okay.” 

They walk together (or Stan walks, Richie trails behind like an eager dog) to some run of the mill sandwich salad dine-in place not very far off from Stan’s work. They order from a screen and find seats at a tiny secluded table opposite each other. They both have a little square beacon that will light up when their food is ready, Richie spins his around on the table top a couple times before he pushes it out of reach. 

When Richie doesn’t instantly leap into some kind of speech, Stan looks up at him. 

“What made you come here now?” he asks. He’s calm, reserved. 

“I just needed to see you for myself,” Richie says. “To see that you’re okay.”

Stan blinks at him. “You know this is crazy, right?”

“Coming here?” Richie asks. “Or sitting outside your work?”

“Both.” 

“Well I had kind of a crazy year,” Richie explains. Stan delivers such a powerful eyebrow raise that Richie has to interrupt himself mid-thought. “Yeah, I know, but really. I was in, uh, kind of bad shape a few months ago.”

It’s a new struggle to tell this story to someone who doesn’t already know it. Up to now everyone had some degree of understanding that Richie was in a bad place, based at least on the fact he was in rehab. 

“I had nightmares and anxiety, like everything from Derry just stuck with me.” It feels so unreal now. He’s been so busy moving and thinking and planning he hasn’t even thought about the stupid fucking clown. “I cut everyone off.”

Stan goes conspicuously still at this. He looks across the table at Richie like he’s waiting for more or hoping for a topic change. Maybe he’s hoping to discover Richie is a hallucination and he can just go back to work. 

“And I regretted it more than anything else I was doing.”

Hands in his lap, Stan blinks back down at the table. It’s impossible for Richie to see if he’s fidgeting with his fingers or sitting dead still. 

“I went to rehab, and therapy.” He bites his bottom lip, feeling where some of the skin is dry and will likely peel. Probably _because of_ all his nervous lip biting. 

Richie starts to say something else, but they’re interrupted (rescued, based on Stan’s heavy sigh and the way he launches out of his seat) by the loud buzzing of their little plastic squares. They grab their food together and when they sit again the tense atmosphere is a little bit lighter. 

He eats an onion ring without tasting anything before he continues. 

“I’ve been going around to see the Losers one on one and it’s been so _easy_.”

Finally finally finally Stan looks at him again. Meets him dead on. 

“I’m in therapy too,” he says. “I’m not--I’m not suicidal. You know that, right?”

“I didn’t think you were,” Richie agrees. “He just got you first. You kicked his ass though.”

A shadow of a smile passes over Stan’s face and Richie feels limitless because of it. 

“Didn’t rip an arm off or anything,” he points out. 

“No, well. I was pretty pissed.”

“Is Eddie--?”

With two words Richie knows everything is fixable. If Stan cares enough to ask after Eddie’s wellbeing, that’s enough of a sign for Richie to believe he thinks about them. If he thinks about them, maybe he misses them. He has to fight to hold back a smile to respond. 

“He’s good,” Richie says. “Divorced.”

Stan looks at Richie with some unnamed significance, but all he says is, “Good.”

“I just wanted to tell you, though,” Richie rambles on, faster now that he's tasted hope. “As someone who did the whole isolation thing and then changed my mind, it’s not better.”

“I have... thought about it,” Stan admits. He hasn’t touched his food at all. “My therapist wants me to, but it felt so awkward. Like I waited too long.”

“I’m still, like--” Richie wobbles one hand in front of him, seeking out the exact phrasing he wants to pull out here. He’s often picky about phrasing in his standup too, but this isn’t writing, he can’t call a scratch and start again. He wants to get it right. “Still learning to believe I deserve them. You do too. They miss you.”

When Stan sighs his breath wobbles, just a little bit, only enough for Richie to pick up on. He must look alarmed because Stan leans back in his seat and crosses his arms in front of himself. He breathes deeply a couple more times, slow and steady. 

“This--” he has to clear his throat when his voice comes out clogged. “Shit. This is why I didn’t want to have some public lunch. I hate you.”

His delivery is as deadpan and serious as ever, but, incrementally, the mask falls away. His eyebrows relax and his lips tug down into a held back little grin. When it catches and Richie laughs his own disbelieving laugh, Stan’s smile spreads to stretch his cheeks and show teeth. He looks years younger when he smiles. 

A half hour lunch goes faster than Richie would expect it to and they’ve barely moved on in conversation when they’re interrupted by an alarm on Stan’s phone. He begins to pack his food and rise from his seat. 

Richie does the same, hands uncoordinated from a new wave of nerves washing over him. 

“Lunch tomorrow?” His throat is tight with anxiety when he asks.

“Definitely not.” Stan says it with a laugh, like it should have been obvious, but it hits with a shock. 

Richie tries to reply, the kind of understanding he claimed he would have when he convinced Stan to get lunch, but the words get stuck. That taste of hope that had started bubbling inside him curdles in his gut and his skin goes hot from the rejection. It must play out on his face because when Stan looks up from his to-go container his eyes go wide. 

“Not in public, I mean!” He looks around them like he’s seeking out potential eavesdroppers. “I’ve hit my quota for almost crying in public for the rest of my life.”

_That_ makes _Richie_ want to cry. The relief of it all. The fear that this might have to be goodbye for the last time lifted away from him. He nods, the best he can really manage at the moment.

“Dinner?” Stan offers. “If you meet me at 4:30 tomorrow I’ll bring you home with me.”

“Yeah! Yes, okay.” Richie doesn’t bother trying to disguise his eagerness. “I’ll meet you outside.”

They leave together. Richie takes his cold soggy onion rings like he even wanted them in the first place. Anxiety completely destroying his appetite and ensuring he’ll suddenly be ravenous later on when it’s too late in the evening. He walks with Stan back toward his work despite his hotel being in the opposite direction, just taking any more time he can manage.

“You’re going to take me home?” he asks. “Like to your wife?”

“It might make me crazy, but yeah.” Stan grins to himself. “To my wife.”

“What?” Richie prods, half a joke, half shamefully real trepidation. “Afraid she’ll hate me?”

“Not at all,” Stan corrects. That same grin turns toward Richie. “Afraid she’ll like you.”

Richie smiles back.

They hug outside of Stan’s workplace and it takes more self-control than he knew he had buried inside him to actually let go and not embarrass them both in the middle of a crowded sidewalk. He doesn’t tell Stan he’ll miss him, even though he will, because they'll be together again in a day and that would sound crazy. 

\----

Richie feels more _settled_ than he has in months when he’s back in his hotel room again. Finally free of the vague gnawing feeling of something missing that has plagued him for months. Stan didn’t chase him off, Stan showed interest in the Losers, Stan still _cares_ after everything. 

He’s more relieved now than he was in the hospital when he found out he _wasn’t_ dying. He’s so eager for tomorrow’s dinner he doesn’t know what to do with himself, and he wastes time however he can manage. He texts the Losers a little bit, making up something vague about the weather in the South being too humid for his delicate desert-living self. It’s not a lie, he has been sweating like he’ll get paid by the gallon, but it’s not exactly the truth either. 

Just when he’s beginning to contemplate if it’s completely insane to go to sleep before sunset just because it’ll pass the time, he gets a text from Eddie outside of the group chat. 

‘ _are you busy?_ ’

Richie is dialing Eddie before he even completely realizes he’s doing it. 

“Hey,” Eddie answers. “Sorry to bother you.”

“I called you, dude.” Richie drops into the uncomfortable little desk chair in his room and props his socked feet on the corner of his bed. It puts him in a slouch that will probably kill his back, but for now is comfortable. “What’re you doing?”

“Hanging out with Kermit.”

Richie loves that Eddie considers sitting on the couch with his cat _hanging out_. Just. Loves _Eddie_ for it. Somehow more in these mundane little moments than any other time. Wishes they could FaceTime and he could see both of them sitting around together after work. (They can’t, because Eddie is a tech snob who refuses to buy Apple products, and because he’s beyond hope Richie loves _that_ too.) Has Eddie ripped his tie off yet? Is he still in his nice slacks and black socks sitting on the couch? Probably not, the wrinkles. 

He breaks Richie’s thoughtful silence. 

“I broke up with Trevor.”

All at once Richie is glad they aren’t on FaceTime together. His feet drop from the corner of his bed to the floor with a thump that pulls him painfully out of his weird half-slouch. He has to fight down whatever reaction his face is trying to have, half smile half open-mouth gape. 

“Oh, no?” Why is his _oh no_ a question, he wonders dimly. His brain is too scattered to properly translate his thoughts into words. Or it’s working overtime to translate only his appropriate and non-celebratory thoughts. “That sucks, I’m sorry, man.”

He’s not sorry. He’s never been less sorry to hear bad news in his life. 

“Whatever,” Eddie grumbles. “We weren’t together that long, but it’s still… I dunno.”

“No, I mean--” Richie shifts back in his seat more, not back into the same comfort as before but shifting away from the weird half-fallen posture he’d dropped into. “That was like, your first official boyfriend. What happened?”

“Ugh.” There’s a sound of shuffling when Eddie moves. “No one thing, just little stuff. He didn’t like my shows, was too interested in why I’m friends with a weird amount of famous people.”

“Wow, he sounds horrible,” Richie comments. 

“Shut up,” Eddie snips. “Asshole.”

It makes him laugh. He has no idea what it is about Eddie in particular being mean to him that is so funny. The juxtaposition, he guesses, between the burning acid tone of his voice and the complete lack of any real anger behind it. 

“That does suck, though.” He does feel bad, if Eddie feels bad. He can be happy Trevor is gone and sympathetic to Eddie at the same time. 

“It’s fine. I’m fine,” Eddie insists. “What are you doing? Bev says you’re being secretive about your travel.”

“I’m not being _secretive_!” He plays up the offense. How dare they suggest he’s secretive just because he’s being vague about their questions and hasn’t told them where he is. “I’m just, uh. I’m not!”

“You’re okay?” Eddie asks. He sounds nervous, almost, unsure. Scared to offend Richie by implying he’s concerned, maybe.

It shouldn’t be a surprise, really, that Richie being silent and vague might set off some alarms for his friends. It still is though, a little bit. 

“Yeah, I’m good.” Richie stutters, hesitates, dives in. “I’m in Georgia.”

Eddie is quiet for a long minute. He doesn’t have to ask, he already knows exactly why Richie is in Georgia. Then, finally, warily: “Have you seen him? Did he talk to you?”

“We had lunch today,” Richie says. 

“Jesus, Richie.” Eddie sounds shaken, this must have been the last thing he expected to hear. “Is he okay?”

“Yeah, he seems alright.” He looks healthy and clean and... is there an opposite of disheveled? Stan looked very _sheveled_ at lunch today. “We only had half an hour, but yeah.”

“So… So what are you gonna do?” Eddie asks. “Annoy him into friendship?”

“I don’t know!” Richie practically shouts. As if he has a _plan_. He just showed up in Georgia with _no_ idea of what to do next. “I guess? It worked when we were seven!” 

1983 on the school playground, a much smaller Richie trailing after a much smaller Stanley asking him over and over to play race with him because no one else would. Stan eventually gave in, back then. Far before Bill or Eddie, there was Stan, and they did everything together, they were closer than brothers. Scraped knees and bike races and height measuring competitions. When they turned ten they joined the Boy Scouts together; Richie lasted six weeks before he got bored of it and quit, he hated the meetings, but Stan always came home and taught Richie everything he learned like it didn’t matter that he’d quit. 

Annoying Stan into friendship actually worked remarkably well the first time around, now that Richie thinks back on it. Why shouldn’t it work again?

“Don’t tell the others yet?” Richie asks softly. “I don’t want to get their hopes up if he tells me to fuck off.”

“Yeah, okay,” Eddie agrees. 

xxxx

The next day doesn’t feel real. Time somehow takes a lifetime to move and flies past at the same time. He does nothing all day, too bored to sit around but too tense to do anything else. 

Every time he tries to settle a little bit, his mind leaps to Eddie, newly single and--and what? Nothing about their conversation suggested Eddie was even looking anywhere else, so it _definitely_ didn’t suggest he was looking in Richie’s direction. There’s nothing to even think about there right now. 

He’s thankful for the walk to Stan’s work giving him something to do and think about. 

In the car ( _Patty calls it the Sedanley_ , he’s told) they chatter a little bit more. Stan likes his work, he tells Richie. He likes Atlanta, and his coworkers have finally stopped acting suspicious about his sudden hospitalization last year and don’t tiptoe around him anymore. 

“Patty’s excited to meet you,” Stan says. 

“Excited to meet me?” Richie asks. “Or Trashmouth?”

“You.” Stan navigates a turn precisely, eyes darting from his mirror to the windshield while he effortlessly delivers his next jab. “She’s not a big fan of your work.”

Richie barks a laugh. “Join the club.”

“She knows who you are, from before.” Stan sort of side-eyes Richie. “She knows everything, actually.”

“Shit,” Richie breathes. “How’d she take it?”

“I think it was weirdly easier for her to accept an alien clown wanted me dead than to think I wanted me dead.” He presses his index finger to his forehead and trails down over his temple and jaw. “Explained these.”

A half dozen mismatched little scars scattered randomly along the path he traced. They’re old and faded, only really visible because they’ve been deliberately pointed out to him. Teeth marks.

“Shit, Stan.” Richie can’t tear his eyes away from the little marks. Completely loses track of everything else around them, misses the turn Stan makes into a narrow little driveway in front of a cute house. 

He can only remember the feeling of turning and finding Stan gone in the sewers as a kid, seeing him on his back with his nightmare creature biting him, the sounds of Stan’s screams that they’d let him get hurt. 

The sick churning realization that they’d almost lost him again when he showed up at dinner with bandages on his arms.

How relieved he is that he’s _here_ looking at Stan again face to face, a real solid human being in front of him. Alive and healthy and looked after. 

“Rich?”

The car is idling and Stan is looking across the console at him, concern all over his face. 

“Fuck.” He tries holding it down, breathing and letting the feeling pass through and out. It doesn’t work, the word bursts out like a sob. “I missed you.”

Concern shifts to understanding to amusement. Stan turns in his seat and he barely has to lift his arm before Richie is leaning into his space to indulge in a kind of awkward stretching seated hug. 

He buries his face deep into Stan’s neck. “I’m glad you’re okay.” 

His words are muffled and messy and shaky but he can feel the catch of Stan’s short beard in his hair when Stan nods. 

Stan’s fingers press hard into Richie’s shoulder. “I missed you, too.”

The car is turned off and they both step out into the narrow driveway. Stan stops at the first stone step that curves up around and leads to a cozy looking porch and when Richie catches up, pulls him into another hug, a proper one this time. 

Richie leans into it, feels the crush of Stan’s body in his arms. He’s smaller than Richie remembered, not much bigger than Eddie in actuality. He feels sturdy and strong, miles away from the man who stood in the hospital on shaky Bambi legs and asked all of his friends to not contact him again. _That_ Stan was brittle and sad. Richie wants to never see that again. 

“I want us to be friends again.” Richie says, head bent next to Stan’s. He hasn’t explicitly said it before now, he realizes. He begged Stan to talk and told him over and over about how he misses him, but he never said out loud he wants Stan back as a friend. 

“Yeah,” Stan agrees. He squeezes Richie back. “I know.”

They separate and Richie sorts himself out, brushing hands over the front of his wrinkled shirt. He wonders in the back of his mind about spying nosy neighbors and if that’s the sort of think Stan cares about. 

“On a scale of one to ten--” Richie sniffs and rubs a hand over his face. “Can you tell I just cried in your car?”

Stan squints his eyes at Richie critically. “Yes.”

Well. He can’t do anything about it now. 

Patty is inside, looking a lot like how Richie remembers her looking from his glimpse but with shorter hair. She’s cute, and she hugs Richie like an old friend and tells him she’s ‘ _heard so much about him_ ‘. 

“Stan told me you heard a _lot_ of things,” Richie replies. 

“Yep!” She answers cheerfully, like she isn’t confirming knowledge of the horrifying reality of shapeshifting aliens. “Including the time he dared you to eat eggshells.”

“ _Stan!!_ “ Richie yelps. “You promised _to the grave_.”

It was Richie’s most mortifying memory as a teenager. All of the Losers would rise to dares like a life or death challenge, no lines in the sand. They didn’t all _escalate_ the way others would (Bill was dangerously adept at raising stakes) but there was no backing down. 

Until the eggshell incident. 

Richie thought it would be easy with all the confidence that fifteen year old kids approach everything. He’d reveled in Eddie’s grimace when he chewed the crunchy shell loudly, but the moment he tried to swallow his body rebelled and he puked all over himself. 

Most of the Losers were stuck somewhere between horror and concern, but Stan only laughed hysterically, sense of humor as weird and unpredictable as ever. 

“You looked like _The Exorcist_ ,” Stan said through gasping lingering giggles while Richie stood, shirtless and cold, waiting for Bill to come back with a new shirt. 

“Sorry,” Stan says from the kitchen where he’s grabbing plates out of a cabinet. “I remembered the story before I remembered the promise.”

Richie can tell he’s lying, his smile is evil and crooked and he couldn’t be happier to see it. 

“We made a chicken parm pasta bake,” Patty says like her husband and his oldest friend aren’t in a staring contest with each other from separate rooms. “Would you like some?” 

“Yeah, please.” Richie breaks his gaze to smile at Patty. By the time-honored rules of the staring contest it does mean he loses, but it’s fine. 

Their dinner is in some kind of slow cooker, so it’s warm and melty and ready to go when they sit at the table. 

Conversation bounces around during dinner. Patty is easy to talk to and seems to enjoy Richie and Stan covering some of their earliest memories together. At times Richie stays quiet and just watches how they interact with each other and soaks it in. It’s obvious they’ve been together for a long time, talking in a familiar shorthand with each other when they both fight to tell Richie the story of how _they_ met. 

“I don’t want to be weird,” Richie says once Patty settles from laughing at Stan’s admission that he _was_ drunk at the college party where he met her. “But… thank you, I guess, for being there for Stan. After Derry.”

Patty’s smile goes soft and sweet and Stan looks shocked when Richie dares to glance at him. 

“Of course.” Her answering tone is serious. He appreciates it, not being laughed away, she knows how important her being there was just as much as Richie does. “Every time.”

“There won’t be any more times,” he assures them both. 

“Did you have someone after?” Patty asks. 

Stan says her name quietly, worried probably. He knows Richie didn’t and he knows where it got him. 

“No,” Richie confirms. “My own fault, though. I kind of cut them off, drank instead.”

“Oh.” She sounds like the very idea of it makes her sad. 

“I’m alright,” he rushes to say. “I just had a lot to like, come to terms with.”

Both Stan and Patty nod like this makes perfect sense, and he supposes it does. There was a lot of information to swallow at once with their sudden return to Derry, their memories, the fight. But that’s not everything. 

“I’m gay.” He says it to his plate at first, then forces himself to look up. “That was a big one.”

Patty laughs. “I imagine it would be,” she says. 

At her side, Stan looks surprised, but happy. 

He explains a bit about his time in rehab, his therapy, his traveling to see the Losers. He doesn’t share everything about their lives, only enough to assure Stan that they’re all safe and healthy. Beverly and Eddie are both divorced (a good thing, they both swear to Patty), Bill told his wife everything too, Mike and Ben are doing well for themselves. 

“You know?” Patty smiles between Stan and Richie. She has such a devious hint to her expressions sometimes it’s easy to see how she and Stan get along so perfectly. How similar they’ve become to each other over time. “You’re a lot nicer than your comedy would lead someone to believe.”

Stan barks a single loud laugh. 

——

After dinner, Stan starts to clear the table of their dishes, but Patty stops him. She steals the plates right from his hands. 

“Go catch up,” she tells him. “I’ll do this.”

“Are-“ She stops his question with one look, years of silent communication between them perfectly conveying her exact meaning. Stan sighs and smiles. “Okay.”

He leads Richie upstairs to a well-kept office with a big wooden desk and a wall of bookshelves. Stan takes a seat in a plush chair and Richie follows his lead, sitting in a matching chair next to him. There’s a stubby little coffee table between them stacked with a number of composition notebooks.

“I read about you being in rehab,” Stan confesses first. “I don’t usually read gossip, but the headline showed up while I was online.”

“Yeah? I guess it got around.” Richie wishes he’d thought to ask for a glass of water before they came up here. He’s not thirsty, but he would appreciate having something to do with his hands while talking. “That’s a big reason I’ve been seeing everyone. Making amends, you know, twelve steps and everything.”

Stan narrows his eyes at Richie like he’s said something very strange. “I don’t think AA asks you to apologize for things you have no responsibility for.”

“I guess…” Richie can at least agree he holds no responsibility for Pennywise considering It was apparently around for several millennia before Richie existed, but, “I still dragged you to Neibolt when we were kids, the sewers, everything.”

“And the Oath was my idea,” Stan says. “We all had a part in what happened last year.”

“But at the hospital--” those words haunted Richie all year. 

“I was traumatized,” Stan explains. “I was lashing out.”

“Oh.” Richie doesn’t know what else to say. Has really spent months dwelling on this idea that Stan hates them. Hates Richie. Agonized over showing up in Georgia unannounced to see someone who didn’t want to see him. 

“After a _lot_ of therapy I don’t really blame anyone,” Stan says. 

“You didn’t reach out?”

“I was… building up to it.” One hand pulls at the end of the end of a sleeve, an absentminded little action that betrays his nerves. “Slowly.

After we killed It I just--” Stan looks over at Richie, eyes sad and pleading. “I just wanted everything to go back to _normal_. I was so _mad_ that my life had been disrupted like that.”

Richie had never considered that possibility. He didn’t give a shit that his life had been disrupted really. Yeah, he had _dates in Reno_ , but that was it. Stan has a _life_. A sense of peace found in routine and comfort. If Richie had this he would probably be upset to lose it too. 

“I didn’t think about you guys all being traumatized too, or that saying that might affect you.” His eyes are unfocused, disappearing into memory. “I was just thinking about _home_ and _Patty_.”

“I can’t blame you, man.” Richie tries to catch his eye the best he can manage. “We were all fucked up.”

“And I just left you there, fucked up,” Stan says. “Left Eddie without even seeing him.”

“Stan.” This time Stan does look at him, full eye contact. He looks sad, but not in a weak, defeated way. “No one blames you for reacting to grief how you did.” 

“I thought about Eddie a lot,” Stan confesses. “For months I thought about him and I was too afraid to search his name and find an obituary.”

The thought pangs through Richie’s gut. How close they’d come to the possibility of that being _real_. What it would have said, _loving son and husband_ , knowing now that Eddie was miserable and closeted. 

“You saved him,” Richie says. “When you pushed him.”

One inch to the left and the obituary would have been real.

“I wanted to reach out, but I didn’t know if you guys would even want to hear from me.” Stan tugs the edge of his sleeve again and Richie has a flash memory of them at the beach house, Stan in short sleeves with old and faded scars, unbothered. “Maybe it was best if I didn’t.”

“Well, you were fucking wrong.” Richie tries to fight his smile and play serious, but he wavers wildly. “But that’s why I came here after you.”

Stan smiles back, more in his eyes than his lips, shining in the lamplight. “I’m sorry,” he says. “That what I said hurt you.”

“Seriously,” Richie tells him. “You’re here now, it’s fine.”

xxxx

The notebooks in Stan’s office, it turns out, are full of memories written out in an even and tidy hand. Scared of forgetting again, Stan wrote down everything he recovered over the last year, front and back of every page across multiple books.

They look at some of them together that night, before Richie has to leave because it’s getting late and Stan and Patty both work in the morning. Most of what they go over are some of the first things Richie remembered too; Georgie, the summer of 1989, the sewers, the Oath. 

They’re not all bad. Stan wrote about his first kiss (Rebecca Stevens, 1991) and how he joined Richie at the arcade even though he had no interest in Street Fighter. He wrote about helping Beverly at the laundromat after her bathroom exploded, how he insisted on paying _and_ called it a date, something Richie has never known about but was so quintessentially Stan it’s like he’d known about it all along. 

Richie lays awake in his hotel bed for close to an hour, unable to stop smiling and fall asleep. The feeling that, yes, he _has Stan back_ rushing through his veins like adrenaline. 

He goes back the next night and the one after that, laughing and crying at all these memories together. Richie gets to add his own insights at times, his side of certain stories that add to the tone or change everything. 

It’s comfortable. It’s more than he could have hoped for when he first formed this half-baked idea to come find Stan. 

“Did you know?” he asks out of the blue. It’s not at all related to the latest memory they’ve been laughing at, but is something that’s been on Richie’s mind. “That I’m gay. You looked surprised.”

Stan falls quiet in a thoughtful way. “I didn’t _know_. You never told me.”

“But..?” Richie prompts him. He can hear the ‘ _but_ ‘ in the air. 

“ _But_ ,” Stan adds. “I remember you were really obsessed with Luke Skywalker, so part of me suspected.”

Richie loses it, laughing into his hands until he can’t breathe. 

The logic is so specifically bizarre, so weirdly Stan, that he can’t even find it in him to be freaked out about it like he felt at Bev’s similar suspicions. 

“I’m glad you’re okay with it though,” Stan carries on as if Richie isn’t wheezing like a dying vacuum cleaner in his office. 

Richie is happier than he’s been in months. 

Stan seems happy too. Even Patty remarks on it at dinner one night, how glad she is that he has someone other than her to talk through all of these stories with. She’s always willing to listen, but there’s a difference in telling a story _to_ someone and sharing a story _with_ someone. 

That’s the night Richie brings up his newest half-baked idea. What’s better than sharing a story with one person? Sharing a story with six people, he figures. 

They haven’t had a proper Losers reunion with all of them since the year has passed. There was something, he knows, but one dinner with not even all of them there can’t possibly count as celebration. They should get a place together, make it a vacation, find a way to all be together as adults. 

Stan listens to his suggestion with extreme trepidation. Richie doesn’t push the topic, wary of pushing his luck too far and Stan shutting down the whole suggestion before it even has legs. 

But he doesn’t stop thinking about it.

\----

He calls Ben, back in his hotel room before bed. 

They catch up a little bit with each other first, work, travels, life, dog. Ben asks if he’s been stretching and Richie tells him, pleasantly surprised at himself even, that he has been! After showers usually, in the middle of a hotel room, trying to be sure to _bend at the waist_ or whatever. He won’t be touching his toes anytime soon or anything, but he feels less stiff and sore. 

“I had a thought recently,” Richie announces when he finally finds a lull. 

Ben hums an ‘ _uh-huh_ ’, then, “I won’t ask you if it hurt.”

“Then I won’t tell you to stick to skyscrapers,” Richie retorts. 

“Alright.” Ben laughs. “What’s your thought?”

“A reunion,” Richie says. “I missed the one you guys had, we should do a big trip.”

“ _Huh_ ,” Ben says. “That’s not a bad idea.”

“Yeah I have good ones _sometimes_.”

“It’d be nice to see everyone again!” Ben sounds like the wheels in his mind are already turning, already excited like he knows everyone else will agree. The thing is, Richie feels pretty sure of that himself. “What about your solo travel?”

Oh shit, Richie kind of forgot he was supposedly seeing the sights on his own. 

“Traveling alone is boring,” he invents his excuse. “It’s no wonder Mike would rather hang out with Bill.”

That and all the other reasons Richie assumes Mike wants to hang out with Bill. 

“Should I mention it?” Ben asks. “Or are you just floating the idea?”

“A little of both?” Richie is wandering back and forth between his room and the bathroom, tidying some of his things and getting ready to shower and clean up before bed. “But we could see how the others feel.”

“Okay!” Richie can see Ben’s charming crows feet in his mind's eye. “I’ll see about it after dinner.”

The call ends a little later and Richie goes about his night. Shower, stretches, teeth, face, climb into bed and see what mindless movie he can watch. 

He idly checks the losers group text and finds it virtually flooded with conversation since he last looked. 

They love the idea of the reunion. 

They think it’s to celebrate Richie. 

‘ _I’ve been celebrated enough thanks_ ’ he sends. 

Eddie replies, ‘ _exactly! We didn’t have a party when I came out!_ ‘

‘ _you know how jealous Eddie gets_ ’ Richie types quickly, knowing it’ll get the rise he wants.

As planned, Eddie sends several messages in a row.

‘ _you wish Tozier_ ’  
‘ _I’m not jealous, dickwad_ ’  
‘ _Also I’m agreeing with you, can you not be gracious about that?_ ’

Before Richie can reply, they’re interrupted. It’s a shock to be reminded they’re in the group chat at all, how quickly it devolved into the two of them snipping back and forth like they always do. 

‘ _Anywhere you want to go? My friend Kay has a place she rents out near Denver_ ’

Denver sounds nice, everyone agrees. Especially once Bev shares a link to the listing and they see how nice the cabin looks. It will easily fit all of them (including Stan) and do so comfortably. 

It’s booked before midnight.

He has a week to convince Stan.

xxxx

Richie hates to admit that he’s being a little bit dirty, tactics-wise, when he brings up the reunion to Stan again within earshot of Patty. It’s just that he knows how stubborn Stan can be, and he knows that when Stan is scared to take a step he’ll dig his heels in and refuse to move. 

“I think you should go,” Patty says once Richie has explained what the Losers planned together just the other night. 

Stan looks at Richie like he wants to throw him into traffic.

“Stan,” she presses. She crosses the room to sit at his side, accepting his hand and weaving their fingers when he reaches out to her. 

“Patty,” he echoes. 

“It would be good for you.”

“I won’t drag you out of your house,” Richie says. “Just think about it?”

Stan nods, and they leave it. It doesn’t loom over the rest of the evening Richie hangs out with them, but he knows it’s on both of their minds. 

xxxx

The next morning Richie is in the middle of shaving when a message lights on his screen, the sharp _ding_ briefly interrupting his music. 

' _Is there room at the cabin for Patty?_ ’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 8)))))) stan just makes me feel like 8) 
> 
> Thanks again to IfItHollers for beta reading for me and excusing my poor idiot grammar. I forgive you for telling me how obvious it is that i love andybean


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Losers have another reunion, with everyone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: a brief line about sexual situations under the influence (in the past), also porn (I'll include the first and last lines of the scene in end notes)
> 
> Thank you again as always to ifithollers for the hyphens and the patience and all the help AND to tiff and atlas for always being there when I need to scream about how insane writing is making me feel.

Stan bounces back and forth on his decision to join Richie in going to the reunion even after their flights are booked. Richie knows it’s just nerves, he gets it, he’s pretty nervous himself, but he appreciates it every time Patty intervenes and calms him down again.

He’s been talking to each of the Losers a lot, planning meals and shopping needs. Everyone is buzzing about their cabin trip, eager for the vacation as much as they are for seeing each other as a group again. He and Beverly have taken to texting each other increasingly long strings of eyeball emojis, each pushing the other toward talking to their respective crushes. Eddie makes a spreadsheet, of course he does, with a list of supplies they’ll need divided into who should be responsible for bringing them.

That’s how Richie finds himself on the phone with Eddie walking up and down the aisles of Kroger shopping for paper towels.

“Don’t buy the shitty ones,” Eddie says.

“I know, I know,” Richie grumbles back. He reaches up and grabs a pack that have _The Incredibles_ characters printed on them just to be a pain in the ass.

“Select-a-size.”

“Yes, my liege,” Richie replies. He dumps a second pack of normal paper towels in his cart. “Oh, hey, so I’m bringing someone with me to the reunion.”

“Oh, yeah? That’s cool,” Eddie replies mildly. “Shit, Kermit’s getting into something, I gotta go.”

Richie barely has a chance to say bye before the line goes dead.

That wasn’t exactly the response he was expecting from Eddie upon hearing that Stan would be coming with them… Maybe Kermit was a bigger distraction than usual, he figures.

He gets a text several minutes later.

‘ _make sure you buy the nice paper plates too_ ’

xxxx

Stan is visibly nervous on the way to the airport, but he doesn’t back out and swears he’s excited to see everyone. Richie projects calm as best he can manage, but deep down he’s nervous too. He’s nervous about the surprise, the reunion, seeing Eddie face to face again. It’s hardly been longer than a month and he feels insane.

“Are you going to be okay with Mike?” Richie asks from his cramped spot in the backseat of the Uris car.

“He’s Mike,” Stan answers from the passenger seat after a moment of thought. “I’m not holding onto a grudge or something.”

“Good.” He’s relieved to hear it. Mike sacrificed everything to stay in Derry and call them back, they all see that now. He doesn’t deserve any more grief.

“I’ll have to talk to him.” Stan accepts the hand Patty holds out over the console to him. “But I want to. I want him to know I don’t blame him.”

“Yeah, definitely.” Richie leans forward to grasp Stan’s shoulder. “I think that’s a good idea.”

Patty is quiet, but smiling, and Stan grins too at both of them.

\----

The flight is too short, too fast. They’re in baggage claim, and a rental car, and the driveway outside of the big cabin. Patty is already outside, digging in the trunk for bags.

“Is everyone else already in?” Richie asks Bill on the phone.

“Yeah,” he confirms. “Do you need help carrying anything? I can come out.”

“No!” Stan gives him a look that suggests his exclamation is _suspicious_. “I mean, no. I don’t have that much. I’ll see you in a minute.”

“Alright.” Bill doesn’t sound suspicious, he sounds distracted. In a roomful of Losers, that’s not entirely surprising. “Bye.”

As soon as the call ends Stan sighs, deflating with the depth of it so he folds right over until his forehead is on the glove box. 

“Stan?” Richie asks, unsure if he needs to be shifting into panic mode or pulling in Patty based on one single sigh.

“I’m fine,” Stan answers. He doesn’t _look_ fine. “I’m just freaking out a little.”

“There’s nothing to freak out about,” Richie says. “These are your _friends_. Trust me, I know this one.”

“I know, you’re right.” Stan runs a frustrated hand through his hair, mussing his curls. “I’m fine. It’s fine. Let’s just go.”

They climb out of the car and Stan looks good. He doesn’t look shaken or stressed out, and it only takes a single moment of eye contact with Patty for him to visibly shake away his nerves. He slings his bag over his shoulder and nods to himself, and then once more at Richie.

There’s nothing to be worried about. He knows this, he knows every single one of the Losers missed Stan too. Still, he has butterflies the entire way up the stairs to the front door.

He stomps in through the door into a narrow foyer with an old wood-burning stove to one side. A few of the Losers are scattered across two large couches just beyond, looking relaxed in a comparatively open living room.

“Took you long enough,” Bill starts up from where he’s crouched next to the stove digging through a shelf. He looks over toward the door. “I told you I could–” his eyes go wide. “ _Stan_?”

The single syllable brings a stillness to the house that hadn’t been there before. All chattering freezes, the sounds of idle movement disappear, every Loser’s head pops up like they belong to a herd of prairie dogs. Richie takes in their every single expression, looking at a point just beyond his shoulder where Stan is, Patty at his side.

Then: chaos.

Sound returns in a complete uproar of speech overlapping, people yelling Stan’s name, and Richie’s name, and exclamations of shock. Ben gets to them first, clapping one hand on Richie’s shoulder and pushing past him to wrap Stan in a hug. Laika follows not far behind him, not sure what she’s excited about, but wagging her tail like crazy all the same. 

Stan looks surprised, but he’s smiling, and he leans into it when he hugs Ben back.

Bill follows, looking at Richie like he can’t believe him and joining in on the hug. Then Mike, and Beverly, and Eddie, all of them smiling and shocked.

Patty catches his eye, peeking over the mass of adult bodies all trying to hug their one friend at once and they both smile.

“Richie!” Bev yells. She separates from the group hug to smack Richie on the arm, then she’s hugging _him_. “I can’t believe you.”

“You sneak,” Mike agrees.

Then _Richie_ is the center of a hug with way too many arms, but he loves it.

“Okay, okay,” Richie says. “If we’re all done hugging each other can I go put my bags away?”

The group finally disperses a little bit, lingering laughs and mutterings of disbelief that _Richie_ would pull something like this off. Someone brings up the spoiling of Mike’s surprise birthday party of 1993. Patty gets her official introduction, happy to grin and wave and shake hands instead of hug everyone. 

Eddie offers to show everyone their rooms and leads them through the house and upstairs.

“We’ll have to shuffle rooms,” Eddie says on the staircase.

“I told you I was bringing Stan!” Richie’s voice is too loud for the space, but no one looks bothered.

“You did _not_!” Eddie yells right back. “You told me you were bringing _someone_.”

Richie gapes. “You knew I was in Georgia, I thought you’d put it together.”

“Well, I didn’t.” Eddie doesn’t look back at him, his voice isn’t sharp, but it’s not normal either. “Stan, Patty, I had this single bed room.”

He opens the door to a cute little bedroom with a big bed in the middle. The decor matches the rest of the house: logs and paintings of deer on the walls. Eddie marches in and picks up a bag and grabs his rolling suitcase, still unopened.

“Sorry to make you move,” Patty says, glancing between the three friends.

“It’s fine.” Eddie drags the bags back out into the hallway. “I mean, it’s for a good reason.”

Stan looks almost embarrassed; he always did hate being the center of attention.

“It does mean I’ll have to room with Richie, though.”

Stan laughs, and then, as if testing the waters, “If he annoys you just dunk his hand in warm water while he’s sleeping.”

“He would never,” Richie insists.

“I might,” Eddie corrects.

Richie’s room, or, well, Richie and Eddie’s room has two beds at opposite walls and even _more_ log furniture. Richie wonders idly if it’s all handmade or the owner of this place went hog wild at a local thrift store. Between them is a sliding glass door leading out to a huge wraparound porch; Richie spots several other sliding doors along the length of the porch when he pokes his head out to have a look.

He throws his bag onto one of the beds and watches Eddie much more carefully place his own at the foot of the other.

“Hey you were gonna give me the twin bed room and take the nice big bed all to yourself?” Richie asks. “Kinda rude.”

“I got here first!” Eddie abandons his bags, not ready or willing yet to unpack them yet. “I get first choice.”

“What do you need all that bed for?” Richie asks as they move back out into the hallway. “You’re pocket-sized.”

Eddie shoves him so he knocks his elbow into the wall, losing his balance but managing to catch himself. They’re both laughing, annoying each other, Richie shoves him back and it’s just like when they were kids, roughhousing for the sake of roughhousing.

“We made out better than Bill and Mike,” Eddie says. “They got bunk beds.”

\----

Dinner is insane. Eight people crowded around a table together, even one that’s big enough to seat them all, is always going to be a little crazy. People are reaching over each other, passing plates and dishes and splitting up into overlapping side conversations.

Richie supplies the cartoon-printed paper towels for the table and watches them get passed around. They reach Eddie, several seats down, and he has the joy of watching him comprehend what he’s looking at and the dawning offense reaching his eyes. He looks away before he knows Eddie will glare back at him, feigning innocence and joining Mike and Bev’s conversation at his other side.

The topic turns to movies when someone asks about Audra and Bill tells them she’s off doing early table reads for her next project, no William Denbrough writing involved.

“I caught your cameo in the last one,” Bev says. “You took the hit like a champ.”

Mike snorts and Bill looks embarrassed. “Audra talked me into it,” he says. “I’m not the on-screen type.”

“You want to talk about taking a hit,” Richie interrupts. “Look no further.”

“Bullshit,” Eddie snaps.

“What were you in?” Bill asks, looking surprised.

“One of the _Final Destinations_ ,” Richie says. “You’re looking at Crushed by Shrapnel number three himself.”

“No way,” Ben says through a laugh. Bev looks just as pleased next to him, her eyes lighting up with amusement.

Richie pulls out his phone to search for the movie. He doesn’t remember which of the many sequels it was, but it doesn’t take him particularly long to find and scroll down through the cast and find himself listed. He holds his phone out to let everyone see.

“Holy shit.” Bev can’t stop smiling, devilish as ever. “We have to watch this.”

\----

They don’t actually watch most of the movie, it hasn’t aged especially poorly, but it never really was _good_ to begin with. They all missed each other, so sue them for talking over a subpar mid-2000s thriller.

Occasionally someone will interrupt with a comment about what’s happening on screen, usually some kind of groaning at the outdated hair and clothes or a laugh at one of the overly elaborate death scenes. Bev remarks that she refuses to ever step foot in a tanning bed after seeing this movie.

His appearance comes and goes so quickly that they have to rewind to find it again. Half of the group missed it because they were all too absorbed in a conversation about their favorite Gillian Anderson roles. They manage, though, and pause at just the right moment to see a younger Richie standing frozen with his arms held up like it will save him from the wreckage headed his way.

“There he is.” Richie gestures broadly at the screen, smiling in a way he knows is obnoxious. “Let me know if you want autographs.”

“Wow.” Bev keeps glancing between Richie on the screen and Richie on the couch. She’s sitting slouched back, one hand scratching absentmindedly between Laika’s ears where her head rests on Bev’s thigh. “How old were you?”

“I dunno, thirty?” He has to guess, it was something like that. It was after leaving Chicago, before the ghost writers, before big success (as if that has to be said).

“I like your hair now much better,” Patty offers. His hair then was long and shaggy, unstyled, often kind of greasy looking. Her comment makes Stan bite down a laugh like he just watched Richie get roasted alive.

Richie touches his hair, still too short for his liking. “You can thank Nebraska.”

“Have you been in anything else?” Ben asks oh so sincerely.

“Yeah,” Richie puts on his casual voice. “Some stuff.”

“Like what?” Mike is asking, but it’s Bev and Eddie who are both squinting at him suspiciously.

“Well, I was in _Camp Monster Dong_ ,” he says. He waggles his eyebrows. “I was Counselor Dick.”

The response is a room full of groans and sighs and laughs, multiple people wave an arm at him like they’ve had enough.

“That’s not real,” Bill insists. When Richie doesn’t laugh it off, Bill shoots a worried glance to Mike, and then to Eddie. “That’s not real, right?”

“How would I know?” Eddie’s tone is harsh, offended that anyone would dare to ask him about a movie called _Camp Monster Dong_.

There’s a long moment where everyone looks at each other. Richie can practically hear the whistling of an old Western standoff tune, each Loser waiting for the other to draw first.

Finally, Bill sighs and pulls out his phone. “I hate what this is about to do to my search history.”

Richie smirks. It’s not real, of course it’s not real, but he’s always been able to pull off a stupid joke like it’s the most honest truth past his lips.

Bill scrolls. And scrolls. And frowns and scrolls more. “It’s not real!” He grabs a pillow from the couch and throws it hard at Richie. “Asshole!”

Noise erupts again, laughing and yelling at each other. Bev collapses against the back of the couch with an arm over her eyes, laughing so hard she goes quiet. Laika looks up at her with her ears perked high. Bill shouts about what Richie has done to his suggested ads with one search alone.

“Okay, no poker with Richie!” Mike declares. He shakes his head and chuckles to himself. “That’s too scary, Rich.”

\----

Everyone trails off to bed one after the other, no one willing to stay up too late even on vacation. Richie stops in on Stan’s open bedroom door before heading toward his own room for the night. Patty isn’t in, off in the bathroom getting ready for bed if Richie had to guess. Stan is in a light t-shirt and pajama pants, sitting on the bed looking at something on his phone. Richie uses all of his focus to not look for the scars on Stan’s arms, exposed for the first time since they’ve been hanging out.

“Hey, baby,” Stan mumbles without looking up from his screen.

“Hey baby yourself,” Richie replies.

That grabs Stan’s attention properly. He looks up and offers only a halfhearted eye roll, looking too amused to really pull it off.

“Just wanted to like, check in.” Richie shrugs. Big Casual Man Tozier is what they call him. “You good?”

“Yeah.” Stan’s smile is slow, gradual, but full and happy. “I’m good.”

“Good.” Richie turns to make a hasty exit before things can get awkward.

“Rich?” Stan’s voice stops him dead, he turns around. “Thanks for dragging me here.”

“Yeah, dude. ’Course.” He’d do it again a million times, even if it kept getting harder and harder each time, if this is what the reward would be.

Stan stands up from the edge of the bed and hugs Richie. They’ve hugged quite a lot in the last weeks after reuniting, but this one is different. It doesn’t make Richie feel like he’s going to shake apart with the fear that _this one_ will be the last one when he hugs him back.

“Do we have you back?” He asks.

“Yeah,” Stan says. “For good.”

Richie buries his face into Stan’s shoulder and hugs tighter, Stan clinging around his middle just as tight.

“Do I get a turn?” Patty interrupts from the doorway.

She moves in to hug Richie too, Stan stepping aside to give her his space. They don’t linger quite as long, one tight hug and Richie presses his cheek to the top of her head. Before she pulls away she presses a kiss to his cheek.

“Thanks, Richie.”

Richie scampers into his shared bedroom as quietly as he can manage, positive that Eddie will already be asleep and _will_ decapitate him if he makes any noise. He climbs into bed in the dark and drops his glasses onto the built in shelf on the headboard carefully.

It takes him a minute to settle under his blankets, finding just the right position and crushing the pillow into something comfortable. He sighs to himself, ready finally to pass out after a long and anxious day.

“Hey, Rich.” Eddie’s voice is soft. Not quite a whisper, but peaceful.

“Yeah?” Richie thinks he can _maybe_ make out the lump of Eddie on his bed in the dark, but it could also just be a shadow, it’s too dark to tell.

“Thanks for bringing Stan back.”

“Yeah, of course.” What else is he supposed to say? He didn’t do anything that amazing, any of them could have grabbed him. Would have, given enough time. He knows it. “Did you really not know?”

“No.” Springs shift when Eddie rolls over, a soft grunt. “I thought you were bringing a boyfriend.”

Richie chokes on his inhale and has to cough several times. “ _No_ , god.”

“Oh,” Eddie continues. “You’re out now, so I just figured…”

“I’m out _to you guys_ ,” Richie corrects him. “I’m a C-List celeb, Eds, I can’t just walk out on a date with some guy.”

“I don’t see why not.” Eddie’s voice is less quiet now. Not worked up, but gone from that half-asleep calm tone from before. “If you just tweet it or whatever. I mean, I can’t tell you what to do, I’m not trying to pressure you.”

“No, I know,” Richie says. Eddie would never push him. “I’ll think about it… When I get a new agent.”

Eddie hums. “Smart.”

“What about you?” Richie asks. “Any new Mister Spaghettis out there?”

“No, I’m–” He pauses. “–considering my options.”

“Options?” Richie laughs a little, surprised by the phrasing. His chest flutters beyond his control and he wonders how long he can spend around Eddie before all of his internal organs become butterflies. “Got your pick of the litter then?”

“I dunno.” Eddie’s voice is back to calm and quiet. He yawns. “Maybe.”

Richie catches Eddie’s yawn, echoing it back to him. “Good for you.”

He falls asleep wondering about these _options_.

xxxx

Richie wakes up nose to nose with a cat staring directly into his face. He jumps at the unexpected invasion, damn near having a heart attack. His reaction scares the cat, its back legs lifting off the mattress as though they’re being controlled by invisible marionette strings before it scrambles wildly away to the other bed in the room.

Eddie grunts from under his covers and mumbles something incomprehensible.

Richie puts on his glasses. “I didn’t know you brought Kermit.”

“Yeah,” Eddie mumbles. One hand pops out from his mess of blankets to scratch under Kermit’s chin, the rest of him doesn’t move. Kermit seems perfectly satisfied.

“He scared the shit out of me.” Richie stretches and groans and rolls across the bed.

In his own bed, Eddie shifts and starts to sit up too, Kermit content again and laying between his knees. The blanket shifts, Eddie has no shirt on.

It’s no simple task, but Richie doesn’t allow himself to look. He stands instead, digging through his bag for fresh clothes and rushing away to shower and change.

\----

Downstairs, Richie finds most of the Losers milling around, mostly relaxing. There are two big sofas in the living room and a big TV playing some sort of pill commercial. One of the couches is taken up almost entirely by Mike, sprawled out with his feet shoved into Bill’s lap; Bill is carefully eating a bowl of cereal held high as to avoid spills. One of Mike’s hands hangs down over the side of the couch, fingers digging into Laika’s fur where she’s laying and snoring on the floor. The other couch is taken by Ben, Bev, and Patty. Down the three little steps into the kitchen, beyond where Richie can see, the sounds of someone clinking dishes around can be heard. 

Richie squeezes into the little space left behind Mike to sit. It leaves them pressed close, but they’ve both never been known to turn down a little bit of a cuddle. Mike shifts against Richie’s side, both of them getting more comfortable. 

“What’s on the schedule today?” Richie asks. His hand falls to Mike’s chest, surprisingly solid for a librarian. 

“This,” Mike responds as he wiggles down even deeper into his Richie-pillow. 

“You’re just gonna lay like this all day?” Bill asks once he gulps down a mouthful of cereal. 

“No,” Mike offers. “I might roll over.”

Richie snorts.

“They have _Monopoly_.” Bill gestures to a stack of boxed board games housed in the TV stand.

Mike considers, but doesn’t move. “I could be convinced to play _Monopoly_.”

Bill looks pleased, either by his success at luring Mike out of his laziness or the fact that he knew _Monopoly_ would do the trick, it’s impossible to tell. He hides his smug smile behind his bowl to drink his milk. _Real subtle, Billy_.

Bev and Stan agree to join in when the game starts, but everyone else turns it down. Richie has personally never liked the game for how long it takes, how boring it is. Why play one game of _Monopoly_ when you could play fifty games of _Battleship_?

“I prefer puzzles,” Patty says when she shakes her head. “Stan and I do them all the time, I’ve been on a winning streak lately.”

Eddie enters the living space with Kermit hot on his heels (Ben folds himself in half over the couch and wiggles his fingers to call Kermit over and is pointedly ignored). He does a visible double-take at Mike using two of his friends as pillows at once. “How do you win at puzzles?” he asks faintly, distracted by spinning around to find a decent seat.

Noticing his struggle, Bev shuffles on the couch and taps Ben for his attention, motioning for him to scoot closer to her and make room. To his credit, Ben only looks mildly sheepish at being cramped so close to Bev’s side.

“If you don’t think you can win at puzzles, you’re not doing it right!” Stan’s voice carries over from the kitchen, not quite needing to shout to be heard. Patty nods solemnly.

\----

They really do all mostly hang out. The game of _Monopoly_ kicks off around the early afternoon for those who are interested, the rest of them linger and lounge and bicker about what should be for dinner and who should be responsible for making it. Ben volunteers, but quietly, because he’s watching the _Monopoly_ game from the sidelines and Kermit has finally graced him with a little attention with the help of the top lid of the game box placed strategically to stop him from wrecking the bank setup.

Richie wonders how jealous Ben would get if he knew how bizarrely obsessed the cat is with waking Richie up by breathing into his eyeballs.

The game eventually breaks, setup left as-is to be continued later on. Richie is slouched back in a chair on his phone, half jotting down little notepad ideas for jokes and half bouncing between various apps mindlessly. He posts a picture of the group to Twitter, cropped precisely to protect all identities involved. He doesn’t write a long sappy caption, just enough to assure the public that he’s not dead.

“Need help?” Bev’s voice pulls him away from his half written thoughts about why cats ignore the people who want their attention the most. She’s looking up at Ben from her seat in front of the game.

Ben nods from the little staircase leading into the kitchen, looking pleased.

She stands and trails down and around the bend after him. The last Richie hears her saying is, “Let me wash my hands…”

–--

Later, after eating and dishes and bickering and _so much_ loud obnoxious ribbing all around, everyone finds a seat outside on the giant porch. The air is fresh in Colorado, it’s nice and peaceful. Richie isn’t a forest camping type of person, but he could see himself living in a place like this, surrounded by nature without necessarily living _in_ nature. 

The forest is pitch black around them already in the early sunset, but it’s far enough away that it’s relaxing rather than frightening. They don’t quite have to worry that something they can’t see is looking back at them from this distance, though there were instructions printed all over the cabin about locking the sliding doors because bears _can_ open them.

That’s all he needs is to graduate from waking up to Kermit standing on his chest to waking up to a bear on his chest.

He and Eddie are seated side by side at the outdoor iron table at the end of the long wooden porch, the last two remaining after all the others gave up and went to bed.

“Ben and Bev are looking close, huh?” Eddie asks, breaking the quiet between them. Around them, nature is loud, crickets and frogs, it’s still early enough in the evening that the cicadas are screaming in the trees. But _they_ were quiet.

“Yeah,” Richie agrees. He hopes they _are_ as close as they’ve looked the past couple days. He hasn’t texted her any eye emojis lately though to find out. 

“Do you know something?” Eddie asks, glancing sidelong at Richie.

“Other than the obvious?” Hands up, palms out, Richie shakes his head. “Nothing.”

“I wonder when they remembered…” Eddie trails off, looking up at the dimming sky.

“I don’t think Ben ever really forgot.” Eddie ditches his side glance to look at Richie full-on, perplexed. Richie elaborates. “I mean, he forgot _her_ , but I don’t think he forgot the feeling.”

Being looked at by Eddie is too much. Too exposing. Too high a chance that connections will be made in Eddie’s big brain. He looks away.

Eddie hums, looks thoughtful. “But you only just remembered in New York.”

“Huh?” Richie’s attention is grabbed again from the edge of the trees where a few late-season lightning bugs are blinking away.

“You just remembered, when you told me.”

“Uh, no.” Richie can’t for the life of him work out what he did to give _that_ impression. He can’t remember the particulars of the conversation, only the parts he replays when it’s time to revisit his most embarrassing memories. “I remembered _you_ as soon as I got to Derry. Why do you think I was acting so fucking annoying?”

Does Eddie think he just goes around entering buildings and banging gongs?

Eddie gives him a _look_.

“Okay, okay, shut up.” Richie rolls his eyes. He would shove Eddie again like when they were bickering in the hallway if they were closer, but he’d probably topple over in his chair if he tried. “I was freaking out.”

“Before that?” Eddie presses.

“Before that what?”

“Did you forget?”

Richie wishes he’d gone to bed when everyone else did very suddenly. He wishes a bear _would_ come out of the woods and murder him. It’s one thing, talking about the hypothetical of Ben’s feelings over the past several decades, and another entirely to talk about the reality of his own.

“I don’t know.” He wishes he still smoked, would give anything for the distraction of his hands being occupied. He has nothing to disappear into. “Not completely, I guess. My manager looked like you.”

Eddie only breathes a very quiet _oh_. 

“I wasn’t _hung up_ or anything,” he explains, desperate to be perfectly clear. “I didn’t know you existed. Besides, a crank can be very therapeutic.”

“What the fuck is a crank?” 

“You know–” Richie breaks into loud exaggerated sobs, miming a furiously-paced jerking off with one hand and then cuts off all at once. “A cry wank.”

“Jesus,” Eddie says. “Christ.”

Eddie is quiet when they do end up heading to bed, but it’s not awkward. They’re just tired, neither of them have much to say. He does catch Eddie once, looking over at him, watching Richie patiently letting Kermit find a good spot on the comforter next to him. He doesn’t say anything when Richie spots him, though. He rolls over and they fall asleep in their little twin beds as comfortable as they can.

xxxx

Not everyone is content to have a lazy week in a cabin together doing nothing, and so they get talked into going bowling. It’s not Richie’s ideal day out, but they are kind of in the middle of nowhere and options are limited, so of course he agrees.

Everyone splits off to shower and dress, fighting over the limited bathroom space like a bunch of first years in a college dorm together.

Eddie loudly insists that it would be a waste to take too many cars, so Richie finds himself crammed in the back seat of the Uris rental next to him. Eddie swings his knee back and forth in the footwell while they all talk about a bunch of nothing during the drive; what life is like in Atlanta or New York, nothing too deep. The movement bumps their knees together anytime Eddie gets a little overzealous in a swing, the way Richie has to sit with his legs spread or risk kneeing Patty in the kidneys through the back of her seat. Eddie doesn’t seem to notice it at all, sitting there with all his leg space, the little fucker. 

The alley itself isn’t huge or especially busy, Richie supposes because it’s 2017 and people would rather be doing literally anything else, but it’s alright. It doesn’t reek, and it does have something of a mini arcade he might get a chance to look at later on. 

If Eddie would hurry the fuck up. 

“This is the third pair of shoes you’re trying on, dude,” Richie says to where Eddie is sitting on a little footstool. “They’re all the same, what are you doing?”

“The other ones were gross,” Eddie snaps without looking up from tying his laces.

“They’re all gross!” Richie waves an arm around at the room in its entirety. “The whole damn building is gross!”

“Shut the fuck up.” Eddie stands, finally all tied up, and points at Richie sharply with one of his many rejected shoes. Richie catches Mike from the corner of his eye walking away and shaking his head. “It has mold on it.”

“Gross, lemme see.” 

Eddie hands him the shoe to inspect, but screeches and wrestles it back out of his hands when Richie feigns like he’s going to lick it. Both of them standing there in front of the rental counter, two adult men, physically fighting over a single shoe. 

The bowling itself is fine, no one is bad enough to make jabs at and no one is good enough to out-perform everyone else. They take up the entire circle of seats and Richie uses the brightest greenest ball available no matter the weight. 

He completes a turn with several pins left behind and a few laughing jeers aimed his way. He’s already constructing his next insult about Ben’s stance before he reaches his seat, but he loses his thread when he gets there. 

Eddie is seated next to where Richie abandoned his jacket holding two flimsy plastic containers. He hands one over when Richie sits, filled with half stale nachos, jalapeño slices, and rapidly congealing bright orange cheese. 

“What is this?” Richie asks, already digging for a chip. 

“I was hungry.” Eddie shrugs. “There was a deal.”

“You eat this shitty plastic cheese?” Richie looks him over, skeptical. “Big farmers market guy like you?”

“I can eat crappy food when I want to,” Eddie replies. He shoves a cheesy chip into his mouth to prove his point. “Oh, it’s me, hold this.”

Eddie’s own nacho container (no jalapeños) gets shoved into Richie’s hand while he takes his turn to bowl, licking salt from his fingers as he goes. Richie can only look down at both of the snacks, feeling distinctly lost. 

He looks back up, catches Mike’s eyes. 

“Is Eddie acting weird?” he whispers at Mike, not wanting everyone around them to hear. 

Mike glances at Eddie, lining up his shot carefully. “Seems normal to me.” He shrugs and leans forward, stealing one of Richie’s chips with an easy smile. 

Maybe Eddie is acting normal. Maybe Richie is picking up on something that’s not there. He puts it out of his mind and refuses to think about it. They play their game, he wins a haphazardly sewn-together dog from a claw game to live in Stan’s car in Georgia forever. Everything is fine and normal. 

\----

At the cabin, Bill cooks dinner, Richie and Mike chopping and washing and mixing behind him. He’s setting up for some kind of chicken dish, Richie didn’t really listen except for to prepare enough asparagus to feed an army.

Dinners have calmed a lot since that first night all together. It makes sense, everything is less of a fervor, everyone isn’t trying to catch up with everyone all at once through overlapping noise. The result is quieter, but still not _quiet_.

They talk memories, grade school and high school alike, filling in gaps for each other. Looking back at all of it for the first time is a trip, and looking back from an adult perspective feels impossible. It’s not like it’s making Richie feel _old_ , necessarily, but more like he can look at a memory and pinpoint its exact lasting effect on him.

Shared memories morph into separate ones, things that happened during the twenty-something years they went without seeing each other. Where did Ben study, how did Bill get discovered, what did Mike like about the library? Everyone wants to know how Patty and Stan met and none of them are surprised to find that Stan settled down quick and young.

“How does that make perfect sense for you?” Bev squints across the table at where Stan and Patty are seated together.

“You just know,” Patty replies.

“I sure as fuck didn’t,” Eddie says to a round of laughs. 

Bev clinks her glass with his. “To huge mistakes.”

“To fixing them,” Eddie corrects. 

They grin at each other, some kind of private joke between them even in the crowded room. Richie knows they helped each other a lot through their divorces while he was too consistently blacked out to be any kind of help to anyone. 

He’s glad they had each other. 

\----

Full dark is just starting to set in when Bill stands and announces he’s making a snack run. It’s not entirely unprompted, they’ve been arguing for twenty minutes about what movie to watch and how stupid they are that none of them thought to buy popcorn before coming on the trip. 

“I’ll go with you.” Eddie turns the bend back around from the kitchen. “We really don’t have any movie snacks.”

“Anyone else?” Bill prompts, looking around the room.

Richie is laying heavy against Bev’s side, both of them wrapped up in a conversation with Mike about the merits of So-Bad-It’s-Good movies. None of them seem to agree where the line rests between bad and good.

Stan and Ben both decide to go, but Patty stays behind, sitting right alongside Mike like she’s always belonged with the group. Richie’s glad to see it, that she isn’t there _just_ with Stan but as a new addition to the Losers.

She offers the entirely new standpoint that bad movies are only fun if presented _Mystery Science Theater_ style and completely derails the conversation to the point that no one hears the group going shopping actually leave the house. 

\----

The group returns from the store with their arms full of bags and a cacophony of sound. They burst through the front door in the middle of a conversation that Richie can’t really decipher the core of.

“We got Twizzlers!” Ben announces. Laika’s hot on his heels, tail wagging, eager to see whatever he came back with. He can barely be seen from the living room to the kitchen, head poking up from where they’re all laying out and digging through the shopping bags on the big island. The fridge hums when it’s opened and there’s shuffling of plastic while things are being put away.

“Are Twizzlers a movie snack?” Richie asks the group still in the living room together.

“Only strawberry,” Mike answers at the same time as Bev says, “No.”

It breaks into a mild bickering between the three of them, Patty silently breaking away to join the rest in the kitchen. Mike insists Twizzlers aren’t _the_ movie snack, but are still a good option, Bev insists popcorn is the only way to go. When Richie suggests they throw a box of Snowcap chocolates in with the popcorn they’re set off in another direction entirely: for popcorn mix-ins or against.

“Hey, Rich,” Eddie’s voice breaks through from the top of the three stairs into the kitchen.

Eddie tosses something when Richie looks over and he catches it on instinct alone, fumbling a little before he traps it between his hand and torso. He pulls it away to get a look. 

It’s a Rice Krispie treat; shiny blue wrapping, cartoon mascots and all. 

Richie distantly recognizes that all life doesn’t stop around him. Mike and Bev don’t even seem to notice that Richie is holding a cereal bar, they’re still bickering. The group in the kitchen are still moving around, throwing something in the microwave. But it feels like it all stops. 

Everything freezes and pinpoints down to the little blue square in his hand, down to Eddie’s big brown eyes staring him down from across the room. 

“Are you serious?” He has to ask, not bold enough to be louder than a whisper, he has to be sure this isn’t some kind of joking reference. Eddie wouldn’t be that cruel to bring it up like this without some reason or motivation.

Eddie half shrugs one shoulder and nods. “Yeah, they’re my favorite.”

Richie looks at him for a drawn out tunnel-visioned moment. Eddie stands there in his fashionably cuffed jeans and a shirt that actually fits him, looking miles away from the man Richie remembers seeing in Derry. His hair isn’t loose and wild but it’s not plastered to his head either, the way Richie knows he _still_ wears it for work even now because he saw it in New York. He looks sincere, big eyebrows pulled in and up over his sad eyes, his fingers fidget at his side just enough that Richie can see it.

He’s nervous.

Bev doesn’t break her sentence when Richie stands, she only leans past him to keep her eye contact with Mike as she explains something about… something. Richie doesn’t know, it’s all Charlie Brown adult voices to him.

It only takes a few steps to reach Eddie. Eddie doesn’t move an inch even when Richie steps into his space. 

“Since when?” Richie asks, voice quiet, for Eddie only. 

“They’ve always been my favorite,” Eddie answers just as quietly. 

Richie watches Eddie’s eyes jump across his face, to his lips, back to his eyes. He’s saved from the burden of decision by Eddie reaching up and pulling him down into a kiss with an arm around the back of his shoulders. 

It’s harsh at first, in a very Eddie way. An insistent press with his eyes squeezed shut like he’s bracing himself against Richie who is just kind of standing there. 

His brain comes back online into the awareness that kissing is, generally, a two person activity. His hand rises to find Eddie’s jaw and comes to rest with his fingers just starting to curl around the back of his head into his hair. The touch has Eddie relaxing marginally, his lips go softer and his head turns, giving Richie the space to actually kiss him back.

Richie does with enthusiasm. His fingers slide properly into Eddie’s hair and he bends forward so much that Eddie has to bend back a bit to accommodate the space he’s taking up. Eddie doesn’t seem bothered by it at all; his free hand grips Richie’s bicep and he reacts like he’s greedy for it when Richie licks at the seam of his lips. 

“Oh!” The clatter of something being dropped comes from behind Eddie, reality sneaks its way back in around them. Bill continues, “My god.”

Every single one of their friends is present and Richie has his tongue in Eddie’s mouth. He moves to pull away and Eddie follows, all but rising onto his toes to stay pressed together. 

“Um.” Stan’s voice, Richie can perfectly imagine him glancing at everyone else. “Is this new?”

“Yes!” Bev yells.

Eddie finally pulls away and he looks dazed, but not embarrassed.

“We should, um–” Richie swallows and removes himself from Eddie’s space, unsure of how they became so entangled in such a short amount of time.

“Talk?” Eddie finishes for him. “Outside?”

“Yeah.”

Richie catches sight of Bill in the kitchen, empty popcorn bowl in hand, Stan at his side looking lost. They have to shuffle past Bev and Mike on the couch, looking elated and mind-boggled respectively. 

On the other side of the front door in the chilled night air, they find a little more privacy. 

“Eddie,” Richie starts with no end in sight, no idea what he’s trying to say, still caught up on trying to grasp what just happened. 

He gapes at Eddie before he gives it all up. Words are too hard, turning his thoughts into speech may as well be alchemy at this point, so he doesn’t even try. Both hands on either side of Eddie’s head this time, he kisses him again. He doesn’t bend him over backwards this time, instead hunching forward to close the height gap. 

Eddie hums against him, smiling wide enough that they can’t even continue to kiss properly and he has to break away again. Richie watches him fight to get his smile under control, the deep lines of his dimples refusing to disappear. 

Eddie clears his throat.

“In high school I made friends with the loudest kid in my class,” Eddie whispers into the minimal space between them. “My mom hated him and I never really knew why.”

Richie laughs. If he doesn’t, he’ll cry. 

“In college–” His big eyes dart to Richie’s lips and back to his eyes again. “The first time I got drunk at a party I was dragged to, I made out with some guy with big glasses and messy hair.”

“Jesus, Eddie–”

Eddie shushes him sharply, but apologizes with another brief press of lips. “Then I had a panic attack about it.” He shrugs, like this is just a dumb side detail that doesn’t matter. 

It makes Richie laugh again, hands still held to the side of Eddie’s face and not letting go. 

“I had to watch your TV appearances at work because Myra hated you.” He watches Richie closely as he speaks, watching as his words really sink in. “She didn’t see the appeal in the nasty crude comedian.” He adds in an undertone, “I kind of didn’t either, actually.”

“Oh my god,” Richie says. They’re the only words that come to mind. 

“So when you said you never really forgot… I didn’t realize it right away, but I don’t think I forgot either.”

In the last several months, Richie hasn’t lost faith that what he saw in his glimpse would eventually come true. He was always sure, somehow or another, he would find a way to talk to Eddie and they could explore a relationship; that he could convince Eddie he was worth taking that leap for. 

None of his imaginings accounted for Eddie doing all of that first. 

“I carved our initials into the kissing bridge when we were kids,” Richie confesses. The only way to express the enormity of what’s lived inside of him for his entire life. “And then again before I left Derry.”

If Richie has ever in his life seen someone look _gobsmacked_ it’s now. Eddie blinks big glassy eyes at him and says nothing.

Richie relishes in it, storing it away for a future time where he will surely brag about making Eddie Kaspbrak speechless. He soaks him in, watches Eddie’s eyes go soft when he traces the thin line of a scar across his cheek with his thumb. 

They kiss again, slow and exploring and eager. Tongues meet and Eddie’s arms cling around Richie’s middle, holding tight onto handfuls of his shirt. 

He’s not sure who breaks away first, but Eddie is smiling up at him when they do, looking thoroughly kissed. His hair could do with more messing up, Richie thinks. 

“So did you really, uh–” Eddie chokes down a laugh, Richie can hear it in the wobble of his voice. “Crank? To me?”

Richie’s laugh is nothing more than an exhale. Finally he drops his hands from Eddie’s face but doesn’t go far, arms hanging limply over his shoulders. 

“No, not really.” He continues, delving straight into the depths of Too Much Information: “Turns out whiskey really puts a damper on the ol’ libido.”

“Oh.” Eddie glances away, down at his hands held strong to Richie’s waist, then back up. The look in his eyes is a specific determination Richie remembers vividly from Palm Springs. “How is it now?”

Up until this exact moment, Richie wouldn’t have an answer to that question. He hasn’t slept with anyone, nor has he been notably horny, but he hasn’t spent any significant amount of time dwelling on it. It’s not like he expects himself to have the sex drive he did twenty years ago or anything, and he was preoccupied with all of his traveling besides. He masturbates, sometimes, and what’s the difference if it’s from boredom or desire?

He did read about it a little bit online, in the same sort of half-asleep way he read about what’s inside of snail shells when his mind refuses to settle at night. It’s not unusual to take some time to get back to a normal point after an extended period of alcohol consumption. 

It’s now, with a sudden and intense clarity that he finds his answer. Eddie asking him pointedly was apparently all he needed to work it out: his libido is just goddamn fine.

It must show on his face, the understanding, through everything else like a dawning. 

“Let’s go upstairs,” Eddie says. 

Inside is dark, the loud sounds of another dumb movie playing and the smell of popcorn fills the room. The Losers are quiet, but they all take notice when Richie and Eddie come back through the door and bee-line for the stairs. 

“Sorry about the movie.” Eddie is in front of Richie, leading the way. He doesn't sound remotely sorry. “We have to go talk.”

They’re almost to the stairs when Bev calls after them. “Practice safe talking!”

Eddie doesn’t falter in his steps, doesn’t hesitate, throws a middle finger up over his shoulder and keeps walking. Richie hears a single squawk of a laugh from the living room, but nothing else, already into the staircase right behind Eddie.

Inside their crowded little two twin-bed bedroom, Eddie kisses him into the closed door. Any lingering tentativeness from outside is gone and it’s all Richie can do to keep up at first. Eddie’s hands are on him, in his hair and gripping at his shoulder, pressed right up into his space. Richie holds him close, feeling the way Eddie arches into it when he presses both open palms against his back. 

He didn’t share any kisses like this with Eddie in his glimpse. He didn’t feel like he had any right to, then, but this is _real_. This Eddie is real and he’s licking behind Richie’s teeth and humming satisfied into his mouth. 

Richie breaks away to gasp, desperate to relieve the ache in his neck from slouching over awkwardly. He slides his back down the door so they’re on even ground, standing with his legs out from the wall. If Eddie stepped away he’d crumple to the floor. Eddie looks at him, eye to eye, but says nothing. He looks incredible, even glassy-eyed and unfocused as he is, just as breathless as Richie feels. 

The new angle allows Richie new access and he drops his head to kiss Eddie’s jaw right at the joint, reveling in the quiet gasp he gets from him. He presses a second kiss just below the first, licking the salty-sweet taste of his skin between his teeth for just the hint of a bite. The taste floods through him, the hint of sweat there sends a heat blossoming low in his gut. 

‘ _I’d do it all again_ ,’ he thinks when Eddie clings and shivers and moans when Richie bites him again, lower. All the years of forgetting and loneliness, the clown, rehab. All of it if it meant he’d end up right here.

Eddie’s hand is still fisted in his hair, holding tight and leaving no room for uncertainty. Richie is exactly where he wants him to be. 

Richie drops his hands to Eddie’s hips and reels him in, shifting from standing close to pressed flush. He wants to _feel_ Eddie and he wants Eddie to feel him in turn. And he must, because he gasps around Richie’s name, sounding surprised.

He breaks away, wanting to watch Eddie’s face when he uses his grip to roll his hips again. He’s hard, Richie can feel him through his jeans already. Detaching himself from Eddie’s warm skin is well worth it to watch his eyes close when their hips press, the tense line in his jaw when he swallows roughly. 

“Okay, okay–” Richie can’t tell if Eddie is talking to him or to himself. He unclenches his fingers and pats Richie’s hair back into place haphazardly. “Okay.”

“Eds?” He needs some clarity on if this is an ‘ _I’m done_ ’ sort of ‘ _okay_ ’ or something else. 

Eddie licks his lips, Richie forgets to think when he watches the flash of his tongue. His brain falls into complete static when Eddie's palm presses firm at the front of his shorts. He remains only as aware as it takes to catch the vaguely disgruntled sound Eddie makes. 

“What’s that about?” He asks, baffled. He’s seen more than a handful of reactions to his dick, but _annoyed_ hasn’t really been one so far. 

“I told myself all your big dick talk was just jokes.” Eddie unzips him and leaves his shorts gaping wide open, touching him again through the thin fabric of his boxers (plain, clean, no holes, he is _so_ relieved).

“And that’s annoying?” It doesn’t _feel_ annoying with how eagerly Eddie is massaging against him, heel of his palm dragging slow. Richie feels himself twitch into Eddie’s hand. 

“ _Yes_ ,” Eddie insists. “You can’t be hot and tall _and_ big.”

“Says the guy with abs like this.” Richie punctuates his statement by sliding his hands under the hem of Eddie’s shirt, touching soft skin and hard muscle. He finds and follows a light trail of hair from Eddie’s bellybutton to his pants, memorizing the texture, the way Eddie’s hips twitch into his touch. 

His head _thunks_ against the door, combination of the effort of undoing the button on Eddie’s jeans and the hand slinking past the waistband of his boxers too much at once. _Is this really happening?_ cycles on a loop in his brain. A couple hours ago they were fighting about how a centaur would wear pants and now Eddie has his hand on his dick.

“Is this too fast?” he asks. Even he doesn’t know why he asks, but he has to be sure. 

“I don’t know,” Eddie answers. His hand freezes in its movement with his thumb stopped just short of that sensitive spot right under the head which is, Richie is pretty sure, a national tragedy. Eddie looks at him, waits for Richie to look back. His eyebrows pull together in concern. “Are you worried about that?”

All Richie is worried about is how, even unbuttoned, Eddie’s pants are too tight to squeeze his hands into. “Not really.”

The look Eddie gives him is unfiltered disbelief and confusion; Richie might as well have just confessed he comes from a different planet. “Then why did you ask?” 

“I don’t know!” Richie gives up trying to fight with Eddie’s pants entirely and slides his fingers into the back pockets instead. At least there he can cop a feel. “I thought you might care.”

Eddie stares. “No.” He blinks. “I want to jerk you off,” he says, like this should be obvious. “That’s why I have my hand in your pants.”

“Okay,” Richie squeaks. Only it comes out more like ‘ _okayuhhh_ ’ because Eddie shifts and his thumb _does_ find that spot. Eddie rolls his hips into Richie’s thigh with strong encouragement from Richie’s grip on his tight caboose; the sound he makes is delicious. “I–I had the clap six months ago.”

Eddie’s eyes shoot open, bugging out at Richie, his hand freezes again.

“Like, full disclosure, I guess,” he continues, unsure once again what made him open his big idiot mouth. “I’m fine now.” He swallows awkwardly. “Can we start over?”

Richie lifts and moves his arms jerkily, mimicking the motions of someone moving backwards. He adds in his own low, slowed-down warped-by-rewind speech sounds before he stops and returns his hands to Eddie’s pockets.

“Is this too fast?” he repeats.

Eddie gapes, open-mouthed and silent. His hand is still inside Richie’s pants like he’s just forgotten it’s there. 

“This is when you tell me you want to jerk me off,” he supplies like it’s a dropped line. 

Eddie’s mouth, still hanging open, twitches in the direction of a smile and his shoulder shakes with what might be a laugh, shocked and confused as it is. He sighs, says “Shut the fuck up,” and catches Richie in another too-harsh kiss. He pulls away completely. “Get on the bed.”

He does, ditching his shorts and clamoring up onto his mattress. Eddie trails away to dig into his suitcase.

“Lose the pants, dude,” Richie says. He’s laying on his side along the bed, head propped on one hand, interested to see how two adult men are going to fit into a twin together. “Feel like I’m losing a fight with a chastity belt.”

He’s not used to being so chatty in sexual situations. Historically, he’s barely spoken to the people he’s slept with. It’s Eddie, though, and they’ve always been this way. He’s always done whatever it takes to have Eddie’s attention on him, to get Eddie talking back, to make Eddie laugh. 

Eddie _does_ laugh. “They’re not that tight.” He continues to dig one-handed through his bag, the other pulling his jeans down over his hips. 

He kicks them off onto the ground and stands up from his bag with a tiny bottle in his hand. 

“You brought lube on your friend vacation?” Richie asks while Eddie makes his way back over. 

“You never know when you could need it.” His answer comes absently, distracted by assessing the space situation on top of the bed. Richie doesn’t take up the _entire_ thing, but if they lay side-by-side they’re at a real risk of one or both of them toppling over the side. 

“Uh-huh,” Richie teases. “Is that why you wanted that big bed all alone?” 

“Ugh.” Eddie shoves Richie’s hip so he lays flat and climbs up over him until he comes to a rest sitting on his thighs. “What I wouldn’t give for that bed right now.”

“This isn’t so bad, actually,” Richie argues. His hands trace Eddie’s thighs, strong and wiry and lightly hairy, up to where his cute butt is _still_ covered by his soft boxer-briefs. He pats one hand there, encouraging him to move. “C’mere.”

He shifts and rolls forward, dropping so Richie’s head is caged by his forearms. 

Richie wants to say something else, crack some other joke about _something_ , but he can’t think with the way Eddie is looking down at him. All he manages is to say Eddie’s name. It doesn’t even scare him, how reverent he knows he sounds when he does. 

Eddie kisses him sweet and slow, like he has all the time in the world. One of Richie’s hands slides up, tracing the line of his spine under his shirt and coming to rest between his shoulder blades with his shirt bunched up around his arm. He feels the change in texture of Eddie’s skin where his scar is, too smooth and tight next to the soft lightly peach-fuzzy skin right next to it. His other hand drops to Eddie’s tailbone, moaning happily when Eddie takes the hint and rolls their hips together finally. 

They find a rhythm, a grind. One of Eddie’s hands tugs Richie’s shirt up to his armpits. 

“Fuck, you’re hairy.” Eddie breaks away to look Richie over, runs his fingers over his chest. He isn’t, like, a _carpet_ of hair or anything, but if what he has does something for Eddie he won’t question it. 

“Can I touch you now? Jesus.” His hands have been desperate for it since they shut the bedroom door behind them. 

Eddie sits up completely and leans back to finally, _finally_ pull his boxers down over his hips and thighs, dropping them somewhere off the bed. He doesn’t pause before leaning forward to do the same to Richie, fingers tugging impatiently at his waistband. 

“Better?”

Richie looks him over, scrabbling for the lube at his side. He’s kneeling so he’s looking down at Richie, erection flushed and swollen, arms crossed tight over his chest. Not shy and demure, not Eddie; petulant, difficult. 

‘ _I want to suck his brain out of his dick,_ ‘ Richie thinks. He can feel the phantom stretch in his jaw already, wants to hear Eddie falling apart. Next time. He sits up, leaning a pillow against the awkward shelf headboard to sit back against, shirt stuck hiked high up under his armpits. 

Instead what he says is, “You look like Donald Duck.”

Eddie looks down at himself. “What–? Oh.” He grabs the hem of his t-shirt and lifts it off over his head. “You are so annoying.”

He leans forward to kiss Richie, angle much easier now he’s sitting up. Between them Eddie wrestles the bottle from Richie’s hand, pops it open, and squirts some into both of their hands. 

Richie struggles to reply between kisses. 

“Keep calling me–” Kiss. “–annoying, I’m gonna–” Kiss. “–get a complex.”

“More like you’ll get a fetish for me insulting you,” Eddie mumbles in the general space of Richie’s neck. He wraps a hand around Richie and bites the skin of his neck at the same time, halting the response about him not knowing how right he is deep down in Richie’s chest. 

The noise he makes rests somewhere between a whimper and a moan, and he stretches his neck to give Eddie more room. He fumbles blindly between them before he finds Eddie’s erection and finally gets a hand on it, hot and smooth and satisfying. He can feel Eddie react to his every touch as much as he can hear him; he gasps when Richie’s thumb swipes across the tip, twitches in his hand when Richie twists his wrist, moans against his chest when Richie tightens his grip and strokes a little faster. 

It’s not going to take very long, Richie recognizes. Not with how keyed up he’s been since the moment they kissed downstairs in front of everyone, a lifetime ago. Not with how long Eddie spent touching and teasing him against the door. 

Eddie doesn’t mess around. He’s done with the flirting, the teasing, single-mindedly focused on getting Richie off with a shocking efficiency. 

It has Richie feeling off-balance. He tries to stay present, offer feedback, to tell Eddie all of the things he’s doing exactly right, but he gets too lost in _feeling_ all of it to manage. He buries his face in Eddie’s neck and garbles whatever nonsense comes out of his mouth. 

Eddie doesn’t seem to mind. He huffs and pants into Richie’s hair and leaks down over his fingers like nothing else. 

When Richie uses his free hand to grip a handful of Eddie’s ass and encourage him to work his hips into Richie’s fist, he cries out a broken sound. He drops forward, leaning heavily on Richie’s shoulder, and gasps his name before he comes on Richie’s chest and stomach. 

Richie holds him while he shivers through it, on knife’s edge himself just from the sound of Eddie saying his name in that needy voice. Eddie’s gone lax around him, finding his breath, until Richie shifts minutely in a desperate stretch for some kind of friction. 

His movement must register in Eddie’s head, because he kicks back into motion. He sits up enough to kiss Richie filthy, pushing him back into the pillow he’s sitting against and pumping his fist again, fast and tight. 

Richie tries to keep up, tries to kiss back, but he’s rapidly falling apart. He’s moaning around Eddie’s tongue when he comes, both hands gripping tight at his waist, taking in the slight give of the firm muscle there. 

For a while they both just breathe sitting slouched together against the (honestly kind of painful) headboard to Richie’s bed, skin sliding sweat-slick together where they’re touching. 

Then the tension breaks, and they’re still them. 

“I need to get up but I don’t want to move,” Eddie mumbles into the general space of Richie’s chest and shoulder. “I need to clean up.”

“You need to clean up?” Richie asks. “I’m the one covered in jizz.”

“Oh my god.” Eddie gags. Fake or not, Richie can’t tell. “You’re disgusting.” The thought must be too much though, because he does jump into motion, lifting away and moving to get off the bed. 

He stops, pauses, drops back down to kiss Richie one more time quickly, and then climbs off the bed. 

Richie watches him patter across the room on bare feet to go digging through his luggage again, bony ankles and strong calves. He sighs, slowly starting to sit up himself. He’s unsure of how, exactly, he’ll make it to the bathroom with any amount of subtlety, but he’ll have to try. 

“Where are you going?” Eddie’s voice freezes him in place, one foot almost to the ground

“To clean up?”

“Lay back down,” Eddie commands. This time he produces a little box thing from his bag. “I got it.” 

He pops the lid of the box, and Richie is only able to put together that it’s some kind of wet wipe once Eddie has one in hand. 

Richie isn’t used to… basically any of this. Being sober in a sexual setting is relatively new. Lounging around after the fact, casually nude, is definitely new. Eddie leaning over and wiping Richie’s chest and stomach clean is a lot to wrap his mind around in general, tender as it is he’s left feeling unexpectedly vulnerable. He’s off balance, unsure, quiet while Eddie precisely folds the wipe and drops it in the tiny trash bin. 

“C’mon.” Eddie throws the sweatpants Richie slept in last night at him from where they’d fallen to the floor. 

They pull on their pajamas together and sneak down the hall to the main bathroom where they wash up and brush their teeth side by side. Richie sits on the wide bathtub edge and watches Eddie complete a complicated routine of flossing and mouthwashing and skincare. He accepts a capful of the mouthwash when it’s presented to him, swirling it around his mouth until he gets the Eddie approval to spit. 

Both of them squeeze into Eddie’s cramped twin bed together somehow. It’s not easy, and it’s not exactly comfortable, but they agree that they want to be close and there’s a low chance that they’ll _actually_ fall off the side. It’s not the worst thing in the world, having Eddie pressed snug up against his back with his arms wrapped around him. It’s easy to doze into quickly. 

He has a flash of a memory. A hotel room in the middle of a road trip, a realization, this exact position but reversed. The first time he said _I love you_ to Eddie and how nerve wracking it was then, even to an Eddie he was married to who had presumably heard it thousands of times. 

“So-” he waits for Eddie’s responding grunt to know he’s listening. “Considering your options, huh?”

Richie expects annoyed, he doesn’t expect Eddie to huff against his neck and pinch his nipple.

“Ow!” Richie does his best to rub the pain away. “Fuck.” 

“You deserved it,” Eddie mumbles. He’s obviously beat, up past his bedtime. “I think I’m done considering.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. There’s this guy I’m into.” He yawns. “Big, annoying, funny.”

“Sounds like a catch.” Richie will not admit just how wibbly he feels listening to Eddie. He’s thankful to be facing away from him. 

“He is.” He says it so easily, any sense of joking gone. 

Richie breathes deep. Steels himself. “I love you, Eds. Like, for real.”

“Yeah.” He sounds well on his way to sleeping now. One hand swoops across Richie’s chest, patting with the flats of his fingers into the soft flesh over his heart. His fingers curl, he traps some chest hair between his first two knuckles and tugs. “I love you too.”

xxxx

Richie expects Eddie to be an early-riser. To climb up over him out of bed and disappear off to shower or run or whatever other Eddie things he likes to accomplish in the morning. 

Maybe he is, normally. He was in Palm Springs, mostly, seemed to like springing out of bed to get a start to his day. Maybe what Richie is seeing is Vacation Eddie, because he’s still asleep when Richie wakes up, breathing into the back of his neck. 

Richie doesn’t move, doesn’t dare to do anything that will end this situation prematurely. His phone is close enough that he can grab it and squirm down into Eddie’s chest and the arm hanging relaxed over his ribs. He fucks around on Twitter and finds nothing interesting, responds to a text (a string of eye emojis) from Bev with his own string of middle finger emojis, and plays three games of solitaire before Eddie stirs at all. 

When he does, he presses his face deeper down between his pillow and Richie’s back, grumbling the whole way. After a moment there he falls away into the tiny, cramped amount of space there is for him between Richie and the wall. He doesn’t move. 

Very, very carefully, Richie rolls until he’s facing Eddie. He finds him on his back, staring up at the ceiling with his big round eyes, wide awake. 

“All of our friends saw us make out.” Eddie doesn’t blink, doesn’t so much as twitch a muscle. 

“Ayup,” Richie agrees, jovial. “They, uh, they sure did.”

“They all know why we came up here.” His voice is almost flat, impossible to discern his exact feelings about this.

“Most likely,” Richie agrees again. “Is that a problem? Like, them knowing?”

Finally Eddie does move, reaching out lightning quick to grab Richie’s hand in his. “No! Not because–I mean, I’m _embarrassed_ –” he grumbles it like he hates to admit it. “Not because of _you_ , though, because I acted like…”

“A horny idiot?” Richie supplies.

“Yeah.” Eddie visibly cringes. He lets go of Richie to brush a hand through his hair, standing up wildy on one side from sleep, and drags it over his face, tugging down at his scarred cheek. “In front of everyone.”

“I mean, they’re assholes, but they’re not _assholes_ ,” Richie says. “They’ll be fine. Go brush your teeth.” 

“Yeah, you’re right. It’ll be fine.” He sits up and grunts a bit with the stretch he arches into. Richie watches the curve of his back through his t-shirt and longs to follow the track of his spine with his fingers, then remembers he _can_. The shirt is soft, old probably, or expensive… Eddie shivers and mumbles about being ticklish when Richie slides higher up his back.

Eddie twists and leans back, landing so he’s held on one elbow above Richie. He looks soft, wide awake but still with that aura of sleep clinging to him stubbornly. His free hand reaches to hold Richie’s face, fingers curling against skin rough with stubble, and he initiates a kiss that Richie meets happily. Chaste, brief, but comforting.

As soon as Eddie is out the door, Richie has his phone in hand, texting Bev again. 

‘ _tell everyone BE NORMAL or I’ll feed them to bears_ ‘

She replies with a laughing face and a thumbs up. 

Eddie returns, refreshed and hair brushed. Kermit is pissed at him, he reports, for being locked out of the room overnight. Saw him in the hallway and walked right away. They get dressed together in the space between their two beds in relative quiet. Until Richie’s brain wins again and he has to speak. 

“Not to be like, ‘ _so what are we?_ ’ but…” Richie falls off his thought halfway through, wishing he’d at least waited to be dressed before making things awkward. 

“I dunno.” Eddie’s response is muffled by the shirt he’s pulling down over his face. Richie feels briefly anxious about what he’ll say next. “What do you think?” He turns before Richie can answer. “Uh ‘ _boyfriends_ ‘ seems a little light for half the stuff we said last night.”

He doesn’t look embarrassed anymore, but Richie knows what the vaguely shocked expression on his face does mean. 

‘ _I never forgot you_.’

‘ _Our initials are on the kissing bridge_.’

‘ _I love you_.’

Is ‘ _soulmates_ ‘ too heavy? He thinks so, no matter how true it might feel. 

“I guess we can work it out,” Richie says. He thinks he can live with _working it out_ , as long as Eddie is working it out with him. 

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees. He elbows at Richie’s side as he walks past toward the door. “Together.”

Before he can reach the door, Richie catches his arm and pulls him back. He waits, looking at Eddie looking back at him, letting the anticipation build between them. 

“Did you give me the room with two beds because you thought I was bringing a boyfriend?” Richie asks. “Were you jealous?”

It was obviously not what he was expecting. Eddie glares up at him, always difficult. He sets his jaw and says, “No.”

“Uh-huh.” Richie nods, playing right along. “You just needed that whole big bed to yourself because?”

“Because I _got here first_ ,” he repeats his same excuse from the other day with all the conviction of a man who knows he’s been caught in a lie. 

“Sure.” Richie backs down, for now. There’s always time to bring it up again later. “First come, first serve.”

His agreement doesn’t seem to do anything for Eddie who continues to look irritated at being called out. It makes him laugh, which makes Eddie poke him hard in the chest. He doesn’t hold Eddie back this time when he walks away.

——

Breakfast is… fine. It’s not completely awkward and stilted or anything, but it’s not _normal_ either. The Losers don’t like, applaud or make some obnoxious fuss when Richie and Eddie finally sit at the table where everyone is either eating, preparing to eat, or lingering after eating to talk. 

But Richie _knows_ half of them are dying to know what the hell snapped between them last night. He wouldn’t be able to answer anyway, he doesn’t have a single idea what sent Eddie from thoughtful silences to dragging him away from movie night to get naked together. 

“So uh–” Bill clears his throat, dragging the same piece of sausage through a puddle of syrup repeatedly but never eating it. “I guess if we’re all going to be honest, Mike is, uh, _with_ Audra and me.”

Everything falls still. Richie doubts that anyone is _surprised_ , deep down, but no one was expecting the announcement to come with pancakes. He can’t be sure it’s on purpose, but he appreciates the timing of it relieving Eddie of feeling like everyone is thinking solely about _them_. Hell, Richie feels better to lose some of the attention too. 

“You’re a-–a–” Richie stumbles, gesturing across the table. “A _THROUPLE_?”

Bill nods, tight. “I guess that’s what you call it.”

“Mike.” Richie turns his full attention to Mike who looks shyer than Bill about the whole thing. He’s sitting slouched, but Richie can see the fingers of one hand wrapped tight around Bill’s upper arm. “Blink twice if they’re holding you hostage.”

Mike rolls his eyes but he’s laughing. “I’m not a hostage, Richie, thank you.”

Richie remembers LA. Mike refusing to borrow his apartment. Telling Richie he was the second Loser to know he’s into guys. Holy shit. Right under his nose. Yeah, he suspected _something_ was going on, but the confirmation is still kind of crazy. 

“So–” Patty glances across the table from face to face. “Is everyone in this friend group sleeping together?”

Eddie chokes into his glass of water, hunching down to wipe his mouth and laugh into his fist. 

“Well–” Richie shoots a look at Beverly, until now eating more-or-less silently and displaying appropriate levels of surprise at Bill and Mike. Ben is across the kitchen at the stove, carefully constructing some kind of omelet. 

Slowly, everyone else follows Richie, until all eyes are on Beverly. She has the disadvantage of not having her back turned, or Ben would be getting the looks too. 

She balks, eyes bouncing from one Loser to the next like she’s been accused of something. Then she sighs, dropping everything and slouching back into her seat. 

“Fine, yes. Okay?” She shrugs her shoulders high and drops them back down. “Sorry, Ben.”

Ben’s shoulders are hunched pretty high himself, but he’s smiling when he turns around too. He doesn’t spare any Loser other than Beverly a look, full power of his big puppy eyes pointed at her.

“I fucking knew it,” Eddie hisses.

“I can’t believe this,” Stan says. 

xxxx

The rest of the trip flies by too quickly. 

It’s relaxing, all of the Losers together again, no secrets lingering between them. Eddie doesn’t have to act like he’s picking objectively the best seat in the room to sit next to Richie (he never _had_ to, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t) he just sits next to him because he wants to. They’re allowed to curl up and take over half the couch and do nothing but watch trash daytime TV.

He does get to suck Eddie’s brains out. The last afternoon together before everyone has to head home. All the Losers are outside, downstairs, grilling up a whole array of meats and vegetables. Eddie dips away, something about checking in on Kermit, and Richie’s intentions when following him minutes later are completely pure, honestly, no seriously, like untouched snow. 

Anyway it happens, Eddie’s back against the curtained sliding door in their bedroom, fingers wrecking Richie’s hair. It’s probably obvious when they rejoin the group, Richie alone feels doped out from it (Eddie looks like a cartoon character that got bonked on the head), but he regrets nothing. 

Too soon they’ll all be going home, and the memory will be all he has to get him through the days until he can visit Eddie again in New York. 

They make plans, late at night crammed together again on the twin bed. Richie still wants to move out of his shitty apartment, and Eddie already wants to help him search; either not trusting Richie’s tastes or simply being the type to love house hunting, he doesn’t know. They’ll visit, they’ll call, they’ll make long distance work for as long as they need to. Neither of them harbor any doubts that they _will_ work. 

The last breakfast together is a little more solemn than the rest. It’s not sad, really, it’s just tough to say goodbye again. 

“We’ll do this again,” Stan says. “Every year.”

Just the same as he always was. _We’ll come back if It does_ , but evolved. _We’ll come back because we want to._

They don’t cut their palms and Bill doesn’t ask them to swear to it, but they all nod decisively. 

Richie doesn’t leave with Stan and Patty, he’s not going back to Georgia. It takes them forty minutes to get through the door with how long everyone needs to hug them before they go. Bill cries and sets off a chain reaction until even Eddie, who Richie can never remember seeing cry even in their scariest moments, is wiping his eyes. 

He rides to the airport with Eddie, even though it makes Richie several hours early for his flight. He tries to convince him to make out in the back seat of the rental before they hand it in but Eddie staunchly refuses, reminding Richie that he’s _famous_ and _in public_. They still wait together at Eddie’s gate until he has to board, at which point Eddie surprises him with the tightest hug he’s had recently, which is actually an impressive feat. He curls over Eddie, holding him close, and promises to call as soon as he lands. 

With Eddie taken off and hours before his own flight, boredom kicks in. He roams the airport shops and texts Eddie pictures of all the stupidest things he can find. 

He sends one to the group chat of him giving the finger to one of Bill’s books in the bookstore, then tweets it. (He follows the tweet with a picture of him and Bill taken yesterday, Bill mid-wailing Richie with a pillow for _no good reason_.)

Later, finally home, finally in bed, feeling only kind of alone, he texts good night to Eddie. (They texted all afternoon, Eddie did not appreciate the flurry of pictures, and when Richie landed he received his own flood of messages; a dozen listings for houses outside of LA)

The thrill he gets when Eddie texts back ‘ _good night, love you_ ‘ can only be summarized in his response: several rows of heart and heart-eye emojis.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW notes: if you want to skip a sex scene it starts at "Inside their crowded little two twin-bed bedroom" and ends at "they pull on pajamas together" as far as dicks being out. 
> 
> THATS THE END BABEY. The epilogue will be coming, and it will be cute and domestic and stupid. thank you for allowing me to take my time to make a chapter I'm satisfied with even if it came out SO LONG ALL OVER AGAIN.   
> This is the longest thing I've ever written and actually completed and I dont even know what to think about it. 
> 
> [HERE](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5otd94p4YD0dA6YmuxmeDP?si=ixizlrM-Q7GhxsqOtALYKw) IS a playlist I made for this! With the help of some good friends with more expansive music tastes than I have.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The After

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone who waited patiently for this last update! I really appreciate it, so much has happened personally and mentally since I last posted, and this epilogue was on my mind the entire time. I wanted to wrap this story up so much, and here we are! Thanks for Hollers for being there from the time this was incepted and again to my close good friends for being there as I progressed. 
> 
> I love you all!

Richie comes out to the sound of a couple thousand retweets, a dozen articles, and a handful of think pieces about toxic masculinity and performative heterosexuality. He gets called onto multiple late night shows and agrees to do a single one for the sake of his own sanity. “Not Fallon” is the only opinion Eddie offers on his choices, a story Richie gleefully shares on TV. 

“My boyfriend—” He cracks up into high pitched giggles, half at the story and half at the fact that he’s on air talking about his _boyfriend_ and the world isn’t ending. “I got all these invites to shows and—I won’t say which one, he’d kill me, but the only thing he said was ‘ _not that one._ ’ I don’t even know why!”

The show ends and the world knows about Richie Tozier and his neurotic weird little boyfriend who is “ _probably asleep already, not watching this for sure_ “.

Two years later and Richie “Trashmouth” Tozier has been completely rebranded. It was a long road, and there were times where he worried it was a huge mistake, but he would never go back now that he’s on the other side. The world knows he’s gay and in a relationship, and his newly broadened audience thinks he’s _actually_ funny. 

He’s building up now to a tour announcement; it’s a couple months out still, but everyone on his new team (no ghostwriters to be found) anticipates decent ticket sales. They’ve been testing out bits of his new stuff around Southern California and it’s been going well. 

He has a new agent, Angela, who takes no shit from him or anyone else. Eddie thinks the sun shines out of her ass. She pushes him beyond his comfort zone, and as much as he hates it (it’s called _comfort_ zone for a reason), he respects her for it too. She’s the one who, when Richie came to her feeling aimless, booked him at a newly-opened club in LA for a simple little set. He told his first real honest jokes in almost twenty years there, his first ever jokes about being old and gay (his new brand, apparently). After that, he would do almost anything Angela suggested. 

Eddie is excited for him. Tells him so often. It’s nice on days like today where it all feels too overwhelming, meeting after meeting after meeting: Richie, be more active on social media; we want to book you on this; send us your new material. He gets to go home after all of it and Eddie is there waiting for him, happy to pull him down so they’re both lying on their wide outdoor sofa and he can just mindlessly decompress. 

Richie fucking…. loves living with Eddie. That’s what it boils down to in its simplest form. 

They moved to Santa Barbara a little over a year ago. They have a cute little house in a quiet neighborhood where no one really cares who they are or what they’re doing. Not that they’re doing much, genuinely just being old and boring together with their cat. 

Eddie initially spent some time job hunting, seeking out a feasible transfer from his New York office at first, then considering a career shift and searching all over the place once he actually moved in with Richie. (He moved into the shitty place in K-Town while they house searched, the most convincing testament to Eddie’s claims of love to date.) Ultimately, they gave it a rest. Richie has money, Eddie has savings. If he gets bored, he can get a job if he wants, but they both quite like him living the life of a househusband. 

They’ve spent a majority of that time redecorating and renovating the whole inside. It wasn’t a trash heap when they bought it, but Richie has learned a lot in therapy about making his space _his_ where he can.

Their first project is painting one wall in their bedroom a deep red, it’s done in a single afternoon and it makes a world of difference to the space. It’s unexpected, how much he likes it, a complete difference from his shitty apartment that lacked any personality. And it just takes off from there. Eddie confesses he never had a say in the house he shared with Myra, so they both go all-out together. 

Eddie has strong opinions about cabinet styles and Richie finds something fun in hunting for handles to match, and then suddenly the kitchen is redone.

They’re still finding things to work on. Richie recently bought an absurdly huge cat tower and stuck it in the office they both share where it practically takes up an entire wall. Kermit loves it, lounging and napping there often, but still coming to sleep on Eddie’s feet at night and Richie’s chest in the morning. It’s possible that Richie is trying to talk Eddie into a second cat, but it’s a work in progress. 

Eddie has a garden in their small but private backyard that he tends to obsessively every day, pruning and watering and checking the _dirt_ even. He’s talking about planting a lemon tree somewhere if they can make the space for it. Richie usually lays back on the same outdoor sofa to watch Eddie at work. He’d originally wanted a house with a pool so he could watch Eddie, half-dressed and lounging on a giant inflatable, but this is actually much nicer. Eddie loves the productive feeling he gets and neither of them have to scoop grass clippings out of any water. 

Plus Eddie lounges half-dressed _plenty_ without the need for a pool. Early retirement suits him well. 

“Oh!” Eddie sits up suddenly. He pats a hand against Richie’s chest. “Stay here, hang on.”

He stands and scampers through the sliding door inside and back out a moment later.

“Check these out.” He’s cradling three bright red tomatoes gently in his hands, the first of the season. 

“Eddie!” This is a monumental gardening moment for Eddie. They were too late for tomato season last year and spent weeks mourning their lack of fresh garden tomatoes every time they had a sandwich. “Look at these!”

Eddie lifts one to his nose and breathes it in, holding it out for Richie to do the same with a happy, cute smile. 

“Wait, hold on.” Richie has to flop a little bit to dig his phone out of his back pocket. He ignores the screen full of notifications to open his camera to grab a picture of Eddie and his tomatoes; one looking exasperated and a second with a sneaky, pleased little grin. 

One goes to the Losers and one (cropped carefully to exclude his face) goes onto Instagram. _Farmer Eddie’s first major success, yeehaw!_

He drops his phone and grabs the biggest of the three tomatoes, taking a big bite. It sends him reeling back to childhood, the last few weeks of school before summer, running around like wild animals after a long winter cooped up inside. 

“Remember your neighbor growing up?” Richie holds his tomato out to Eddie, seated now in the curve where Richie lays on his side with his knees curled, head propped up on one hand. 

He jerks away when Eddie tries to grab it from him, insisting Eddie take the bite from his hand directly. 

“Mhm,” Eddie hums. He has to catch a bit of juice on his finger from running down his chin, licking it up. “Mrs. Swanson?”

Eddie leans back, using Richie’s body as an armrest. 

Mrs. Swanson was Eddie’s ancient neighbor when they were kids. She had a garden, even smaller than Eddie’s is now, that they used to sneak tomatoes out of to giddily eat in secret together. Not often, maybe twice a summer, but they tasted just like this tomato now. The perfect sweetness and the acid filling him with memory. 

“She totally knew we were stealing,” Eddie says. He wraps a hand around Richie’s wrist and drags his hand over, stealing another bite. His thumb presses into Richie’s palm and traces the curved line near his thumb. “She’d see me and wink at me.”

Richie is still swallowed up in memories. He laughs, a breathy little huff. “She’s probably the only reason I didn’t get scurvy as a kid.” He chews another little bite, purposefully saving more for Eddie to eat out of his hand. “Hey, good job, Farmer Eds.”

“Thanks.” Eddie slouches over to kiss Richie, slow and chaste. Richie can feel Eddie’s lips tugging into a smile against his own. 

Just like that, his day is behind him. All the stress he brought home in his shoulders is gone. Eddie just comforts him like that, even if he doesn’t realize he’s doing it. He loves coming home and getting to relax together. 

They order food because neither of them feel like cooking or washing dishes after, so instead they have the free time to curl up together in bed and (kind of) watch a movie together. They talk over most of it, and Richie is still reminding Eddie of the main characters’ names right up to the end, but it’s enjoyable. 

Richie finally checks his notifications before bed, Eddie standing in the doorway of the ensuite brushing his teeth. 

“The internet is proud of you, farmer boy,” Richie says. 

His picture from this afternoon has a number of comments that are all either congratulations on the first tomatoes, unrequested gardening advice, or unfiltered lust for Eddie’s arms in the picture. 

Part of Richie’s rebranding has been changing up his social media presence in a major way. They tried to talk him into Snapchat or whatever, but he insisted that he’s too old and not interested. He’s still on twitter, or really _back_ on twitter after a lengthy break post-coming out. (Reports are it wasn’t _that_ bad, but he didn’t want to find out.) He posts every now and then, little stupid jokes and things, casual but impersonal. 

He’s carved out a place on Instagram, too. There’s no call to overshare, not a lot of prying into his personal issues or anything like that, he gets to share what and when he wants. He goes live from time to time and tells funny little anecdotes, often early forms of his new material he’s trying out but just as often something minor but entertaining that happened. 

The only rule is that Eddie doesn’t want to be seen. They’ve been papped together before, and Eddie has met other industry people, but he wants to maintain some separation. (" _I don’t want some twenty year old to think they can come up to me in public, Richie_ “) So the pictures and videos of Eddie are cut off at the neck or angled so his face is hidden. The results have been… interesting. 

“Boobies underscore sixty-nine says he wants you to play xylophone on his rib cage from the inside,” Richie reads from his comments. 

There’s a hacking toothpastey cough from the other room. Eddie spits into the sink. “What the fuck does that mean?!”

“I have no idea,” Richie replies even as he types ‘ _same_ ’ in response to the comment. 

Eddie crawls into bed and Richie’s phone goes forgotten immediately. Their usual nightly routine is somehow his favorite thing, again more about the comfort it brings than anything they actually do. They usually cuddle up for a while, holding close and listening to heartbeats and trailing fingers across skin (hand stuff optional if they feel like it). Then, they separate to actually sleep on their individual sides. They might still touch, arms or ankles crossed together in the middle of the mattress, but they both like to sprawl a bit to sleep. When Eddie admitted that for most of his marriage he slept on a full size bed alone, Richie opted for the slightly more expensive California king mattress to give him all the space he deserves. 

——

Summer rolls in hot and dry. Eddie’s garden wavers briefly in the beginning of the heat, his adjustment to the ever-present need to conserve water a work in progress. 

“It rains all the time in New York, man!” he yells, even while digging down into the dirt to see how dry it is around his peppers. “I don’t know who the fuck decided to develop around a desert.”

It’s an argument they’ve both played through a hundred times; it’s dry, the pollen is crazy, there’s fires, the drought. They both love it, though, wouldn’t want to go anywhere else. 

Eddie admits he doesn’t miss the snow, not the sludge of New York or the tall white banks in Maine. Santa Barbara isn’t the always sunny no-weather realm that LA is, they get some gloomy days, but in general the weather is _pleasant_ all the time. They can prop open their windows and hear birds and smell the sea air. 

It’s not really about the peppers, anyway. Eddie’s only in a tizzy because Stan and Patty are coming to visit for a couple weeks and he’s nervous.

Why? Richie doesn’t know. Bill comes to visit all the time, and Mike or Audra typically come right along with him. 

He settles when they finally arrive and don’t fall into fits because the hand towels in the guest bathroom aren’t all the same color. 

The visit isn’t about anything, no deeper meaning other than they just miss each other all the time. It’s the first they’ve seen the Santa Barbara house though, which maybe does explain Eddie’s nerves after all.

They come to a little gig Richie has going at a college one night, standing out in the crowd just because of how much older they are than the crowd around them. They all laugh about it later, over dinner in a dumpy but comfortably familiar Mexican restaurant in the neighborhood. About how old they are, decades away from their college years and all that came with it. 

“My first love and my first kiss at the same table.” Richie leans back heavy into his seat. He watches Stan roll his eyes and lick nacho cheese from his thumb at the same time. “What a night.”

He watches the words hit Eddie, sees the moment they sink in completely.

“Stan was your first kiss?” His words are incredulous, wide eyes boring into Richie’s own.

“Don’t act so surprised!” Richie pulls out of his relaxed slouch, leaning forward again. “He wasn’t hot yet back then.”

Patty stifles a laugh, but it’s still enough for Richie to hear. Enough to encourage him to continue right along. 

“Don’t judge us for being two curious young boys, Eddie,” he teases further. He aims to keep going, but both Stan and Eddie interrupt him. 

“You begged me to!” Stan yells.

“ _I_ was a curious young boy,” Eddie mumbles. 

They don’t stay for too long in Santa Barbara in the end, but the time they do spend visiting is peaceful. 

They have an afternoon in the backyard together, just sitting and talking and drinking and laughing. Richie finds himself, as he sometimes does, struck with the difference in who he is as a person now compared to who he was before, both before Derry and in the year after. His life, how he has this comfort he never once dreamt of having before. 

He watches Eddie from a distance, showing Stan up close the various parts of his garden. They’re talking, but their voices are low enough that he can’t make out any of the words. Stan reaches out and touches a leaf, and Eddie’s raised voice carries across the yard, a snapped ‘ _no it’s fucking_ not _!_ ‘. 

Patty is sitting next to Richie, blond hair blowing in the wind. She laughs and grabs another cookie from the plate in front of her. 

“They were always like that,” Richie tells her. He can transpose that moment, Stan poking and Eddie snapping back, over any moment between them from the ages of 11 to 16. “Only smaller, I guess.”

“It’s good for him, I think, having someone to fight like siblings with again.” 

Richie is, as always, _so glad_ he took that trip to Georgia. 

“What’s new in Uris-land, anyway?” He asks. “New house? New car? Any secret identities? You have a real Mr. and Mrs. Smith vibe sometimes.”

“No!” Patty scrunches her nose at him in a way he suspects would be a very Stan-influenced eye roll if she were any less polite. “Kids, maybe. Trying again.”

“Oh yeah, us too,” Richie says. “I keep trying to talk him into it, but he thinks two cats is too many.”

He remembers Stan at the beach, his chubby little baby daughter in his arms. How content he looked, how well parenthood suited the both of them together. 

“I hope it happens for you guys,” he says, dropping all jokes. “You deserve it.”

——

His tour kicks off in the fall with a handful of dates in LA and Nevada. They’re not the kind of huge venues he used to book, but they do manage to grab something in Vegas still. The audiences in LA are great and it hits like the biggest relief when he doesn’t have to break the glass on his “in case of hecklers” emergency kit. 

Eddie joins him for the whole tour, Kermit safely stuck at Bill’s house in LA for the duration. It does make the whole thing a lot nicer, having Eddie backstage with him beforehand, kissing him for luck, meeting him after with a water and making fun of his sweaty face when he’s done. Not being so alone on the road and having someone to share his too-cold hotel rooms with. It’s entirely different from every tour he’s been on before and he loves it.

The difference highlights in his mind the realization that a good portion of his pre-tour stress came from the distant idea that touring would bring up old memories and old habits. He’s so used to touring being a lonely, drunk blur. He didn’t want that again. Instead it feels like a vacation with Eddie there. It’s easy. 

He posts a lot of updates online as they travel. Some of it is obligatory; he has to thank the cities and venues he’s been to, people love hearing what a good crowd they were. Some of it, though, is just that Eddie is so funny on the road he has to share it all. 

He shares Eddie’s rants about the price of coffee on the road and keeps a daily counter of the number of drivers he’s flipped off while driving. He includes the description that Eddie spent a couple decades in New York City and is built out of 98% concentrated condensed road rage. 

He has shows two consecutive nights in Vegas in October. The first is kind of early and goes well, leaving both of them in good moods with the night to themselves in the city. They’re in the middle of sharing an overpriced gelato when Richie elbows Eddie in the side. 

“Wanna get hitched?” He points their shared spoon at one of a million little tacky Vegas chapels. 

It’s a joke, obviously. They’ve talked about it, and they both know they want to, but they haven’t been in any kind of rush about it. They’ve both proposed a dozen times each since they’ve gotten together, Eddie most recently because Richie brought him the glass of orange juice he asked for. It’s something they throw around a lot. 

Eddie steals the spoon back and hums around a mouthful of mango. “Sure, why not?”

Richie laughs, as always, reaching to grab the little paper cup back. Eddie jerks his hand back before Richie can reach it. 

“I’m serious,” Eddie says. “Let’s do it.”

“Wh-—No. I—” Richie stutters and has to stop himself before he becomes a full-fledged Porky Pig impression. “Here? In Vegas?” 

“Why not?” Eddie replies. Simple as that. Richie can tell when he’s joking and this isn’t it, sad eyebrows pressing down into a serious expression. “We’ll be in Laughlin this weekend, could do it there instead.”

“I’m _not_ marrying you in _Laughlin_ ,” Richie nearly snaps. He would sooner rip his own arms off. 

“Looks like it’s Vegas, then.” Eddie smiles like he’s just hatched the most brilliant plan. 

“You don’t want the, like—” Richie waves an arm around them, vaguely implying _big fancy ceremony_. 

“Did that once.” Eddie shrugs. “Didn’t work out.”

Richie has to laugh, he can’t believe they’re talking about this in a hotel with the ceiling painted to look like a daytime sky and fake canals down the middle of the floor. 

“Unless you want the—” Eddie mimics his vague arm waving. “I’ll do it if you want.”

“I just want you.” Part of Richie feels too raw saying that here and now, in a very public setting, but it’s true. He doesn’t care about the details, he only wants Eddie. 

In response, Eddie looks unexpectedly watery. He smiles again, nothing devious or teasing or suggestive to it. Just a happy smile. “Then let’s do it.”

Not two hours later they’re set loose onto the streets, officially married. To each other. Like, on paper and everything. Eddie has the license and a Polaroid of them kissing at the end of the ceremony both tightly held in one hand. 

Richie can’t stop grinning, even if he thinks he kind of blacked out for most of the ceremony. 

“Well?” Eddie smiles up at him. It’s the same smile he has every day, but it somehow looks different.

He can’t take his eyes away from it. 

“Well,” Richie repeats, feeling breathless. He kisses Eddie again out there on the street, too tunnel-visioned in to care. 

“Not official ‘til you consummate,” Eddie teases once he pulls away. 

“We’ve already done that,” Richie offers. “Like, a lot.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, yes, but not as exasperatedly as he normally would. Richie will have to let him know marriage has mellowed him out. “Just take me back to our hotel.”

They scamper back to their hotel together, laughing and jostling each other in the street. Their elevator is crowded, and Richie doesn’t even get to live out the movie-fantasy of a heated make out inside an empty elevator. 

It shifts the second their room door is shut behind them and Eddie pulls Richie close so they’re crowded together, Eddie pinned between him and the door. He kisses Eddie deep and close, fingers pressing to the nape of his neck, hips to hips. He breaks away to kiss along his jaw, his neck, under his ear where he knows it’ll make Eddie shiver. Even after a couple of years it still feels like a thrill to get to know these things. 

Eddie does shiver, his fingers twitching into the meat of Richie’s shoulders. 

“I love y—ah!” Eddie breaks off when Richie bites there, high on his neck, the way Eddie has told him makes him crazy. 

He loves the familiarity between them. That he knows Eddie’s buttons and how to push them. Loves that he can see the look in Eddie’s eyes shift when he laughs or slides his hand to the small of Eddie’s back. 

Only Eddie knows his buttons too, and it’s dangerous. He forgets often, what an open book he is for Eddie. Then Eddie grabs his hair and leads him back into a kiss and his knees turn to jelly, and wraps one leg up over Richie’s hip and his brain melts like ice cream. 

They break apart, everything controlled by the fingers still tangled in Richie’s hair. Eddie looks up at him with his giant dark eyes and breathless smile. “Well—” That hand in Richie’s hair shifts, slides until he’s holding steady against his cheek, pinky finger curling behind his ear. “Are you gonna prop up the door all night or are you gonna fuck me?”

Some kind of noise comes out of Richie. He feels the vibration of it in his throat, but his ears are rushing with too much blood to actually hear it. 

“Right.” Richie kisses him again, could and would do it all night if he had the choice. He has to break away, has to stop at least long enough to get them to their bed. “Right, for sure.”

He becomes possessed by the very romantic notion of carrying Eddie to bed. It’s not exactly the threshold of their home, or really a tradition they hold any investment in, but he wants to do it. Eddie already has one leg up over his hip, so Richie bends and scoops one hand under that thigh, using the other to encourage Eddie into lifting his other leg. 

Richie knows it’s a mistake the second he takes any of Eddie’s weight. As much shit as he gives him about the opposite, Eddie isn’t small. Not in the way that lends itself to an out-of-shape fortysomething-year-old to carrying him easily. 

He grunts and Eddie backs off. 

He doesn’t move. 

He can’t move. 

“Rich?” Eddie asks against his ear, Richie’s face buried right in his shoulder. “You okay?”

“No,” Richie answers after a significant pause. “I fucked my back.”

Eddie jumps into help mode in an instant, shifting to wrap an arm around Richie’s waist and slowly walking with him to sit on the plush couch in their cozy suite. It’s a slow process and if Richie weren’t experiencing spasms of sharp pain the entire time he would both feel like a fucking idiot and be laughing his head off at the same time. 

“Sit here.” Eddie scurries away at top power walking speed to the bedroom and comes back with a pillow in an instant. He presses it carefully behind Richie’s back. “I’m gonna go get some ice.”

He disappears out the front door and Richie holds very, very still. Any slight movement sends pain shooting all up and down his back. 

When Eddie reappears, he has a towel full of ice and a rattling bottle of aspirin. He hands them, opened, to Richie and sits gingerly next to him to press the makeshift ice pack between his back and the pillow. 

After a minute of sitting there in silence, Eddie a comforting presence at his side, Richie starts to laugh. He has to stop even that when it hurts, but he still shakes his head. “I feel like the oldest fuck on earth.”

“You do have some new grays.” Eddie helpfully runs a finger through the hair at Richie’s temple to point them out. “Do you want to lay down?”

Impossibly, it takes even longer for them to lay Richie on his back than it did to walk from the door. 

“Guess my posture really did come back to bite my ass,” Richie says with a heavy sigh. Eddie was always warning him. “Sorry I ruined our wedding night.”

He might be pouting a little bit. A really tiny teensy amount of pouting. It feels better when Eddie smiles wide at him, though, sitting half perched on the edge of the couch right next to him. 

“You didn’t ruin anything.” Eddie leans down to kiss Richie’s forehead, his cheek, his lips. 

Richie kisses back, desperate to keep him right there, wanting in spite of his stupid crappy body. 

“It was really hot when you said that thing about propping up the door,” he blabbers before kissing Eddie again. “Ten out of ten, dude.”

Eddie laughs against his lips, breaking their kiss but staying close, shoulders shaking. 

“I can still jerk you off,” Richie offers. He wants to, god he’d been so looking forward to getting Eddie good and needy. 

Eddie turns him down, which is probably smart considering he can barely move, but it still sucks. 

He has to call Angela as well and tell her, because Eddie is convinced he won’t be up for being on stage tomorrow night, so that’s an entire thing on its own. Luckily the important parts of that don’t rest on his shoulders, but it’s still a shitty call to make. 

Eddie takes a picture of him laying on the couch and sends it to the Losers. 

‘ _Richie threw out his back, also we got married._ ‘

Richie sees the notification appear on his screen while he’s still trying to convince Angela she doesn’t need or want to know the full story of his injury. She’s convinced, not entirely incorrectly, that he’s trying to make a mundane injury sound like a wild sex injury. 

The rest of the Losers go wild in their group text and Angela hangs up. Eddie comes back with an explosively loud group phone call. It’s not long, everyone is happy for them, but they accept the end of the call when Eddie declares that he needs to refresh Richie’s ice. 

They shuffle together to the bathroom, taking another eternity. Richie gripes that he can’t even piss on his own and Eddie suggests from his nearby post that one day they’ll be old and he’ll help Richie piss then too if he needs it. He doesn’t _cry about it_ , but if he gets a little watery in the eyes that’s his business and no one else’s. 

Later, in bed together, ice pack applied and aspirin nearby, Richie sighs up at the ceiling. 

“I have a ring for you already,” he says. 

Eddie is on his back next to him. Unable to actually cuddle up, he’s pressed close to Richie’s side with his head resting against Richie’s shoulder. 

“I know,” he admits. Richie can hear the smile in his voice. “I found it while I was cleaning months ago.”

Richie can’t lie and say he’s surprised. Not that his hiding skills are lacking, he very specifically hid the little box where he thought Eddie wouldn’t see, but he knows Eddie. Knows how thorough he’s been in their redecorating and reorganizing work. 

“You little bastard.” Richie laughs. Fuck, he loves Eddie so much. 

“I like it.” Eddie kisses the bare skin of his shoulder. “I have one for you too, but I kept it at the store.”

“Fuck.” He can’t stop smiling like an idiot. Like, his cheeks hurt from it. “That’s really smart.”

——

He’s still aching in the morning, but isn’t as terribly stiff as the night before. He can hobble on his own to the bathroom without Eddie hovering there like a mobile fainting couch. 

Still, Eddie has breakfast delivered to the room to save them the trip and gives a carefully-given-as-to-not-seem-rehearsed speech about why he needs to cancel his show tonight. Richie isn’t above getting huffy when Eddie says he’s talked to Angela, who agrees, they can probably reschedule for another time and shift the tickets over, it’s not the end of the world. 

“Richie, you can hardly stand up,” Eddie says while helpfully pushing the tiny plate of assorted jellies over toward him. “How are you supposed to do standup?”

“That’s hilarious.” He’s grumbling and grouching and he knows it. Fuckin’ sue him. “I’m gonna put that in my set.”

“Richie.” Eddie earnest-eyes him over the table so intensely Richie can’t bring himself to look up. “If you go up there you’re going to hurt yourself worse.”

He continues to not look up. 

“And then I’ll kill you and take all your money,” Eddie adds. 

It hurts when he heaves a big sigh, which is maybe a sign that Eddie is right. 

So the show gets cancelled. Richie breaks the news online by sharing and adding a comment to the official venue announcement. 

‘ _sorry guys, Eddie blew my back out last night 🥵💦🍆 #lucky_ ‘

Eight minutes later Eddie reads a text message that has him glaring across the room at Richie. 

‘ _Mr. K told me I’m not allowed to lie on the internet. I threw out my back trying to pick him up, it was exactly as sexy as it sounds ☹️_ ‘

It sucks, but it’s the right call.

They don’t share the news that they’re married, greedily keeping it to themselves for now, a private personal thing. Their first day married is spent lounging and making fun of trashy television in pajamas. Eddie takes care of his ice and guides him in some stretches and Richie talks him into little spooning for a lazy afternoon nap. 

He goes live online for the time he was supposed to be onstage. He doesn’t give the whole show away, but he shares a lot of it. He takes the time to answer questions, most of which are about his injury and the story behind it. 

For part of it, Eddie stands behind him with the excuse of fixing his ice pack, a familiar torso and arms that has the scrolling comments at the bottom of his screen drastically pick up in speed. The comments swap from reactions to his bits and his stories to exclamations of Eddie’s name. One person asks about Richie’s back with about fifty hot face emojis after. 

Eddie scoffs when he sees it, but stays quiet, carefully swapping Richie’s ice from a soaked-through towel into a fresh one. He’s already lamented the lack of a good ziploc bag several times since last night, a new road trip staple if Richie had to guess. 

“My back isn’t completely fucked,” Richie reports. “Only like, kind of fucked.”

“I tell you all the time to lift with your legs,” Eddie mumbles. He’s gentle when he presses the towel down between Richie’s back and support pillow. “Feel okay?”

Richie nods up at him. 

Eddie’s gotten better with time (and therapy), but he still bristles at being doted on. Richie, though, feels warm when Eddie takes a step back and his hand lingers over Richie’s shoulders, a gentle reassuring slide. It’s not that Eddie is _taking care of him_ necessarily, but that Eddie cares enough about him to make sure he’s healthy and comfortable. 

His _husband_.

It’s all enough to make him weepy in front of a couple thousand digital audience members so he quickly diverts his gaze. 

“Yes,” Richie replies to a number of comments asking. “I really did try lifting him up and threw out my back.”

“I’m going to buy you a posture brace.” Eddie delivers his words like a threat because he knows perfectly well that it _is_ a threat. 

“The internet says you sound hot,” Richie retorts. The threat had been followed by a stream of comments to that exact point. He watches Eddie’s face journey through a flip book of emotions: surprise, distaste, unsurity, finally settling somewhere between confused and unsettled. He returns to the people watching through his phone. “You embarrassed him.”

——

Richie heals, the tour continues, they return home, married. 

It all somehow feels more real back in Santa Barbara, like it all sinks in at once. Richie owns a house with _Eddie Kaspbrak_ , childhood crush, forgotten friend, love of his fucking life. He’s _married_ to Eddie Kaspbrak. They have a garden together, and a cat, and they redecorate a bathroom together and bicker about tile colors and he’s the happiest he thinks he’s ever been his entire life. 

Mike, Bill, and Audra make a three-person trip out of bringing Kermit back so they can congratulate them in-person on their snap decision. Mike hands them an Instant Pot and they all hang out outside for a few hours while Kermit reclaims his gigantic climbing tower throne. 

When they do have sex again, Eddie is gentle with Richie. It’s a joke at first, all exaggeration, Eddie laying Richie back against their overly plush pillows and teasing about his poor old back. Richie jokes that this is his final evolution into being a proper pillow princess, and Eddie snaps right back with a _‘then what were you before?’_. 

But the joke fades and the gentleness lingers and Eddie carefully takes Richie apart piece by piece. It’s different in a way Richie struggles to pin down; going slow, being sweet, kissing and talking and exchanging _I love you_ s, none of those are out of the ordinary for them. 

Maybe it just _feels_ different being home again after a month on the road, being married, this newly settled feeling of permanence. 

After, Richie scampers away to use the bathroom. He knows it’s conspicuous when he skips right past the en suite down the hall to the main bathroom, and he _knows_ Eddie will know why he takes such a long time just to pee and wash his face, but Eddie knowing so well is half the fun. 

He kneels on the floor of the bathroom in his underwear and shoves his hand into the back of the lower cabinet that stores all the inexplicable things Eddie thinks they need stock of: bags of cotton balls, disposable razors, weird tongue scraper things. Beyond all of those, hidden behind more boxes of Eddie’s specific bar soap than he has any reason to have in stock, is a little velvet ring box. 

Richie pulls out the ring and abandons the box on the counter. 

When he returns to their bedroom, ring clutched tight in his fist, Eddie is in bed dutifully pretending not to know exactly what Richie went running after. 

He grins up at Richie from where he’s sprawled out on his side over one of his expensive neck support cooling technology pillows. Still shirtless, any lingering shyness at the scar tissue patchiness of his chest hair a thing of the distant past, perfectly comfortable in the evening air from the open windows. “Good pee?”

Richie clicks his tongue and flashes a thumbs up. “Crystal clear.” Good hydration is something Eddie has drilled into Richie’s brain, just one of his many life improvements since they got together. 

Eddie lifts an arm and draws Richie right back into bed, right back into his space so they’re wrapped close and content, skin to skin. 

The ring weighs heavy in his hand and he can’t tell why, why his gut flutters with nerves. _You’re already married to him, idiot._

Eddie yawns wide, a sure sign he’ll be asleep soon if Richie doesn’t act fast. So he rolls away from the warmth of his chest to look at Eddie properly. 

“I wanna give you something,” he says. 

“Yeah?” Eddie plays along without a second’s hesitation, as always. He schools his face into something perfectly serious, but his eyes shine with a hidden smile. 

He has no idea what else to say, there’s no proposal speech prepared and even if he had one it would be a little late to give it now. So instead he fumbles blindly behind Eddie’s back until he’s pinching the ring between his thumb and forefinger and brings it down between them. 

The ring isn’t something so over-the-top fancy it becomes gaudy or anything like that. It’s just a band, silver, with a single thin weaving line of ruby on the front. He doesn’t know what it was, seeing it in the store, other than that it felt right and he went with it. 

Eddie doesn’t gasp or play surprised or anything like that, but he doesn’t grab for the ring either. He looks between Richie’s face and his hand, allowing that hidden smile from before to push at his dimples. 

“You already said yes,” Richie points out. He has to clear his throat. “No take-backs.” 

“No take-backs,” Eddie agrees. 

He lifts his left hand and, with some maneuvering, brings his right hand up to wrap around Richie’s. He guides Richie, slowly, until he’s sliding the ring down over Eddie’s finger. 

It fits, and it looks good on him, and Richie can barely comprehend the fact that he just put a wedding ring on someone’s hand. 

He thinks about Bev, a million years ago, when he told everyone at dinner in Derry that he got married. _There’s no way Richie’s married_. It wasn’t even insulting, he knew how laughable the concept was, that was the whole reason he introduced it as a joke. 

But here he is, actually married and perfectly happy with his life. It’s hard to believe even for him. 

It’s somehow still a shock when, not even a week later, Richie turns around from loading the dishwasher to find Eddie on one knee behind him, ring box in hand. 

Richie _does_ gasp, though in his defense it’s mostly in response to Eddie sneaking up on him and scaring him half to death. He clutches his chest, only realizing what exactly Eddie is doing a second later. 

“I wanted you to have the full experience,” Eddie says. He shakes the box in his hand back and forth. “So?” 

“What the fuck, Eds?” Richie’s voice is strained, and the air must suddenly be very dry because his eyes are watering like crazy. 

Eddie grips the box in his right hand and opens it with his left, letting Richie’s eyes catch on the band around his finger with the rubies for a second. He’s hardly been able to stop staring at it all week, it’s making him feel crazy.

The ring Eddie offers is a silver band, honestly kind of unexpectedly traditional in style. Richie can't tear his eyes away from the display in front of him and think again about how, five years ago, not even in his wildest dreams would he imagine a man offering him a wedding band. 

“No take-backs,” Eddie reminds him.

He’s probably been quiet for too long, but he can’t think. 

“No,” Richie agrees. He wipes the sleeve of his hoodie across his eyes. “No take-backs.”

He has to help Eddie stand, because he has forty-three year old knees and is in no position to be kneeling on hard kitchen floors. It makes Richie choke on a laugh that turns into more of a cry when Eddie grabs his left hand and he finds that they both have shaky fingers. 

Eddie slides the ring onto his finger and keeps a tight hold of his hand. His thumb brushes up and over the backs of Richie’s fingers, finding the ring over and over again. 

“After Derry,” Eddie starts, looking somewhere in the general direction of Richie’s collarbone. “After everything, I never thought I’d get married again.”

Richie holds Eddie’s hand just as tight. 

“Not in a sad way,” he elaborates. He finally looks back up at Richie again. “I just didn’t think I wanted to. But I’m really, really glad I changed my mind.”

Richie’s not _sobbing_ or anything, but it is nice when Eddie reaches up and wipes under his eyes with a thumb. Eddie’s own eyes aren’t exactly dry either, even as he’s laughing at Richie. 

“I’m glad you changed your mind, too.”

——

They don’t really share the news with the public. They aren’t hiding it or anything, but it’s nice to have something again that belongs just to them. (Not that they’re a major topic of celebrity gossip or anything, but still.) 

It’s easy enough! They aren’t interesting enough to get papped buying artisanal honey at their quaint outdoor market for the hundredth time. The biggest risk would probably be Richie’s occasional Instagram lives, but as long as he holds his phone with his left hand he figures there’s nothing to worry about. 

Things settle, time passes. Married life fits around Richie like a well-loved jacket. 

In early January Eddie posts a movie review online. This isn’t something he usually does, but he had so many thoughts about this movie, he says, that he had to get it out of his head. 

He does not expect it to grab the attention that it does. 

|| Three years ago I almost died, Cats (2019) made me wish I had. E. Kaspbrak.

Three years ago I almost died in a freak accident. I was impaled (yes really) and all surgeons reported that if it had been an inch to the left it would have obliterated my spine and lungs. Instead, it obliterated a bunch of other stuff that was recoverable, but sucked. Watching Cats (2019) made me wish it had been an inch to the left.

My husband dragged me to see the movie two weeks ago and I feel like I’ve been living in hell ever since then. He thought it would be funny, and he _insists_ that he had a good time, but I know he’s just saying that because he gets off on my suffering. 

Where do I even start, the whole thing is disjointed and confusing in a way my idiot husband insists is _quirky_ and _mind-boggling_ as if either of those things are what a movie is supposed to be. It’s so revoltingly horny that the only word I can muster to describe the entire thing is: _yucky_. This movie disconnected my brain from my vocabulary memory and reverted me back to being a toddler. I don’t think I’ve described something as _yucky_ in forty years. The scene in the milk bar made me gag out loud.

Has anyone making this movie ever seen a real cat before? I understand that the stage play is fuckugly but I mean, looks and behavior aside. Did anyone working on this know what size a cat is supposed to be? Who made the scale of this movie? At times they’re _kind of_ cat-sized, then in the next moment they’re the size of mice, and then big enough to lay in a bed. What kind of transdimensional size-changing cats are these?

Idris Elba, _why_?

I thought when the credits rolled I would finally be free. I could move on with my life and never think about this movie again. My husband has made sure that I know that is not an option. I wake up every day to him humming the songs. Singing that “Rum Tum Tugger is a curious cat while he’s brushing his teeth.” He likes to scream “milk” like Jason Derulo when he makes coffee in the morning. I used to like when he made me coffee. 

To my husband, I’m leaving you for the man in our audience who yelled “ _STOP DOING THAT_ ” when two of the cats rubbed their faces together for the hundredth time in two hours. He’s a genuine hero who would make me coffee in a peaceful silence. ||

It goes viral, as much as anything does in 2020; people talk about it and retweet it feverishly for about three days before they move on. It gets caught up in a lot of the frenzy that anything making fun of the movie does for a couple of months.

It goes forgotten to the next big internet joke until a couple weeks later. 

Richie is on his phone in the kitchen, held up close to his face and pointed so the camera can see the frying pan on the stove top. He’s showing off a recipe he lovingly calls: Leftover Fried Rice Shoved into an Omelette. It’s delicious, it’s easy, it’s good hangover food even though he’s not really in a place where he deals with hangovers anymore. 

“The nice thing about if you fuck up is you can just make it a scramble.” he explains to the internet as a whole. He focuses very hard on not getting distracted by the scrolling comments and ruining breakfast. “This one’s for Eddie, though, so I won’t fuck up.”

He continues on, carefully lifting the egg away from the sides of the cooking pan to keep it from sticking. Listing ingredients and other fillings in place of rice, trailing off into a tangent about which types of mushrooms are burger mushrooms and which are omelette ones. There is a difference and it does matter. 

“Oh shit, you wanna hear something wild?” He pauses, biting the tip of his tongue and holding there while he folds the egg over the rice and over itself into a rice stuffed eggy burrito. It slides out cleanly onto a waiting plate. “Ta da! Anyway, so my pubes are going like, completely gray.”

He flips the camera back to his face while he rattles around a cupboard to grab a couple of mugs and ground coffee. 

“I know,” he replies to his captivated audience. “But only the undercarriage, it’s weird. It looks like my balls saw a ghost.”

“Richie.” That's Eddie’s _exasperated_ voice. He’s standing in the dining room, leaning over onto the open island that divides the two rooms. 

“Oh, sorry.” Richie spins so Eddie’s arms on the countertop are just visible behind him. “No balls talk with the Internet, Eds gets jealous.”

Eddie scoffs. Richie can’t see him, but he has no doubt in his mind there was an eyeroll involved. 

“I tattooed his name on my taint and it’s just not enough for him.” He pinches his finger and thumb together and mimes out his invented tattoo, bouncing from word to word. “Property of Edward Francis K.” He stops the bouncing to scoop coffee. “I have a big taint.”

“Can I have my food?” Eddie interrupts. 

Richie peeks over his shoulder, Eddie is leaning heavy on one arm, smiling serenely. 

“Yes, dear.” He slides Eddie’s plate across the counter to him. “I’ll bring your coffee when it’s done.”

“Thank you.”

Richie goes back to his frying pan while the coffee maker putters and spits behind him. He talks and cooks, theorizing a new show he could put on called _Ramble and Scramble_ , where he talks too much and fucks up his eggs and has to scramble them. It might get repetitive, but who knows. 

Eddie is still visible in the connected dining room, seated at the table with a fork in one hand and his phone in the other. He’s silent and absorbed in whatever it is he’s reading. 

Scramble finished, Richie pours two coffees. He sugars his own and turns to pour milk for Eddie’s. 

“Check this out,” he whispers to his phone. He hums a little fanfare and pours, yelling ‘ _Miiiiilk!_ ‘ as he does. 

There’s not a second’s delay. 

“Shut the _fuck up_!” Eddie roars. 

Richie loses all coordination to how hard he’s laughing, high pitched and snorty. Eddie isn’t _really_ pissed and they both know it, but it’s still funny to bring out almost a month after seeing a stupid movie together. 

That’s all it is, a stupid joke shared with the internet. He disconnects, grovels for Eddie’s forgiveness, and they have breakfast together. 

He doesn’t think about any of it again. 

In the afternoon, his phone starts to buzz with texts, followed directly by the incessant buzzing of manager calls. They’re outside. The air has a chill, but in a comfortable way, and they’re just out there taking it in. 

“Richie.” Angela doesn’t sound angry, but she doesn’t sound like she has good news either. “You’ve got the internet detectives going wild today.”

“Do I?” 

“Uh-huh.” She clears her throat and her tone shifts, it’s clear she’s reading instead of speaking her own thoughts. “Is Richie married to that guy who hated _Cats_?”

That seems… weirdly specific for people to be puzzling over. 

“We know Eddie’s last name starts with K,” Angela continues reading. “It matches up with the author of that thing, and Richie did that milk thing today.”

“Oh no,” Richie groans. He’s just loud enough, apparently, to grab Eddie’s attention. He perks up from the other side of the yard, instantly on alert. 

It’s the first time in a very long time Richie has felt the anxiety of strangers knowing things about him he didn’t want them to. 

“Do we need to be doing damage control?” Angela asks. 

“I’ll let you know,” he says. Eddie is already coming to his side. “Ten minutes.”

“Rich.” Eddie is there, speaking before Richie has fully pocketed his phone. “What happened?” 

He explains the situation. People online with the most insane memories known to man put some things together and they’ve been found out. They know they’re married, they know Eddie’s full name, they’ll surely soon have pictures of his face. 

“Richie.” Eddie sits in front of Richie, waiting until they have direct eye contact. “This is okay.”

One hand reaches Richie’s jaw, thumb pressing up close to his earlobe, warm and secure and comforting. Only those positives appearing make it clear to Richie that he was pushing steadily closer to an all out panic. 

“We knew this would happen eventually,” Eddie reminds him. They’ve talked about it before, neither of them had any doubt they would eventually reveal that they are married. 

“They know your _name_.” He’s whining. It’s pitiful. He knows it. 

“What will they find if they search for me?” Eddie asks. “I’m retired, I don’t do anything online with my name attached, every last record of me exists from my job in New York.”

Richie finds his breath. 

“I just thought—” He stops, swallows around his lifetime-ingrained habit of choking off his emotions, and presses on. “I hoped we’d tell them on our own terms, you know?”

“Richie.” Eddie smiles and pushes his fingers through the hair at Richie’s temples. Just this morning he was teasing Richie about the greys growing prominently there while they brushed their teeth side by side. “Maybe we still can?”

When Richie says nothing, Eddie presses on.

“Post something about it.” Eddie leans and grabs Richie’s phone from his pocket. “Your own thing. No damage control, no damage has been done, but this can still be on our terms.”

Eddie is—Richie doesn’t say it, not here and now, he’s not even sure he has the words available in his vocabulary for what Eddie means to him. How deeply he loves him. Even just holding the feelings in his body sometimes feels like too much. Makes him want to run laps around the neighborhood yelling to all their neighbors that he loves Eddie Kaspbrak the entire time. Like he has to vent them out little by little like a pressure cooker or he’ll explode. 

Except for that he’s nearing his mid-forties and he’s over six feet tall and his knees and general body would not appreciate any of that. 

So instead he kisses Eddie in their backyard, next to Eddie’s cute little garden and the grill they both spent three bickering hours together building. And Eddie kisses him back, hands holding Richie from pulling away a moment sooner than he has permission to. 

He posts a picture of Eddie’s hand, his left, giving the finger. The ring with the ribbon of rubies embedded is perfectly visible.

‘ _we got married a while ago, mind your own business,_ he writes. He pauses and adds, ‘ _also stop googling Eddie._ ‘

——

Their yearly anniversary of killing a nightmare clown comes around again, as anniversaries tend to do. They go to the Outer Banks for the reunion, at Richie’s suggestion and endless texts of link after link of house listings. 

It’s not the house he saw in his glimpse. He considered trying to track it down by memory, but ultimately decided not to. He stopped chasing that exact life a while ago, perfectly happy with the version he’s cultivated for himself right here and now. 

It is a nice house, though. Big and full of space for everyone, no one has to be condemned awkwardly to bunk beds or a pull-out couch. 

They arrive separately, trickling in couple by couple. Beverly and Ben are already there when Richie and Eddie arrive, and Mike, Bill, and Audra are only a few hours later than them. Bill wanders in, griping that Richie refused to tell them his flight information so they could all five fly together. 

“I didn’t need you there cramping my style, Bill-man,” Richie says. “I knew you’d tattle when we wanted to join the mile high club.”

Mike’s laugh is good-humored, familiar and well-worn from knowing Richie for so many years. Audra’s is a cackle, surprisingly loud for the _petite pretty actress_ look she holds with the general public. 

“We did not join anything,” Eddie says, already forcing his way past Richie to hug the new arrivals. “And we never will.”

“Hi guys!” Ben calls from the seat he hasn’t moved from since the moment the newest Tozier-Kaspbrak addition passed out in his lap. Little orange fuzzball Floyd Pepper, knocked flat on his back, exhausted from his first plane ride. 

Patty and Stan show up last to another huge round of hugs from everyone. 

“We had to stop so I could pee every twenty minutes,” Patty explains with an apology. She stretches and groans, one hand pressing into her back and the other on her round belly. “She’s on my bladder.”

Stan wanders in after her, arms overloaded with bags but a wide grin on his face. The same smile he’s had on every call since Patty found out she was pregnant. 

At dinner, with everyone settled and comfortable around a long table, the sound of nine voices overlap. Mike gives a toast, shorter than the one Ben gave the year before but just as touching, and Richie is silently overcome with love. 

The topic cycles around to Bill’s latest book progress, Mike and Audra both teasing that he spends hours and hours locked up inside his office working and _still_ isn’t done. 

“Is this ending gonna be dreary and depressing like the last one?” Bev asks. 

“It’s realistic!” Bill shouts back with the air of a man who has had this argument a million times over. “People don’t just get everything they want!”

Bill isn’t an idiot, Richie thinks as he looks around the table. He looks at all of his friends one by one, sees them all sitting next to their partners, their friends, their baby on the way.

He looks at Eddie next to him, eyes crinkled up with the force of his smile. One hand holding his glass of water and the other pointing emphatically, eyes going baby-deer wide when he starts yelling back at Bill about something.

Bill isn’t an idiot, but he’s wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know if I need to do a reader ID for the emojis in Richie's tweets but they are:
> 
> "sorry guys, Eddie blew my back out last night [hot face emoji, water drops emoji, eggplant emoji] #lucky"
> 
> "Mr. K told me I’m not allowed to lie on the internet. I threw out my back trying to pick him up, it was exactly as sexy as it sounds [frown face emoji]"

**Author's Note:**

> YES I did make their car playlist on spotify YES I can share it YES it is just as stupid as you're thinking it is
> 
> Warnings:  
> drug and alcohol: richie is dealing with alcoholism and drinking a lot and references doing coke a couple of times
> 
> suicidal ideation: richie thinks about dying in his drunk sleep 
> 
> unsafe/unhealthy sex: richie hooks up with a few nameless guys and is generally unsafe, but I don't go into detail about any of it
> 
> depression/homophobia: richie is really depressed and sad and is haunted by the clown. he's self-isolated from the rest of the losers.


End file.
